As solicitors we have had to come up with various different ways and means to ensure that our clients can obtain a valid Will in the challenging and often changing COVID-19 environment. We have witnessed Wills through windows, on car bonnets and even on wheelie bins, but in some cases this might no longer be necessary.

Jodie Wielgus, Partner in Ramsdens Private Client team has featured in When They Get Older , where she discusses what to do when you are named as the executor of a will.

Jodie Wielgus, Partner in Ramsdens Private Client team has featured in Dying Matters Leeds, where she provides a simple guide to will writing.

​The current Covid-19 crisis has thrown up numerous challenges for all of us, but for some the challenges are far greater. Ramsdens Private Client team have many years of experiencing working with people who have dementia and those who care for them. As we begin to return to normality, or indeed the new normal, we wanted to cast a light on what people living with dementia continue to face every day.

​The current lockdown and the resulting isolation has given us all time to think and reflect now that we have been taken away from “normal life” and there is no guarantee as to when this will resume. Now is the perfect time to make sure that our affairs are in order and to ensure that we do not leave anything to chance.

​There is little doubt Covid-19 has caused many issues for families all over the world. We are having to deal with problems that we didn’t know existed only a few months ago. The current pandemic was unimaginable and as a result, people have not had time to plan for a worst case scenario.

​We were recently involved in an unusual and important case to execute a Statutory Will for one of our client’s (‘P’). It became apparent that the most recent Will made by P had been made in secret under undue influence (whereby a person ‘P’ is induced to act otherwise than by their own free will or without adequate attention to the consequences).

This is something which the Court had to consider in the recent case of Clitheroe v Bond [2020]. The case relates to the Estate of Jean Clitheroe who died in September 2017. She had three children, namely, a son and two daughters, one of whom had died in 2009. In 2010 she made her first Will effectively leaving the bulk of her estate to her son John Clitheroe and excluding her daughter Susan Bond.