Many people I talk to are slightly confused about what Mirror Wills are and what Joint Wills are. Well, they are one and the same thing, it’s just different people use different terminology to cover a pair of wills drawn up at the same time by a couple who live at the same address.
The couple can be married, Civil Partners or simply living together, same sex or otherwise.
The reason I chose to use the term Joint Wills rather than Mirror Wills is that, sometimes, they do not exactly mirror each other, many couples living together and using my service to write their wills have slightly different requests, they may have children from previous relationships or wish to specify different gifts. e.g. one will might gift the husband’s golf clubs to his son whilst in the wife’s will she might wish to leave her jewellery to her daughter, that’s a terrible generalisation but a common example of the differences that make the term Joint will more accurate than mirror wills.
Don’t worry, in both cases the clients always receive 2 wills, one for each of the couple so that their wishes can be read in the event of just one of them passing away. After the death of one of the couple the surviving partner’s will is still valid as I always build in a proviso for this happening, if in doubt, please feel free to talk to me about how this happens. You can contact me via the Contact Us page on this website.
If you are thinking about making a will, you might also want to add some element of asset protection to your Mirror Wills and we’ve produced a very useful video explaining the most common form of Trust use to do this if you’re a home owner, it’s called a Protective Property Trust.
