Ever heard of Will Aid ? It’s clever. Will Aid means you can have your will professionally drawn up by a solicitor, but instead of paying their usual fee you make a donation to help a charity.

Around 70% of people have either not written a Will or not kept it up to date and a similar percentage die without having left a Will. But making a Will is the only way to make sure your money and possessions go to the people and causes you care about. If you die without a Will, your property will be distributed according to intestacy law, a complex set of rules that dictate how assets are distributed – and which is far too tedious to describe here.

"Too many people don’t realise the problems it can create if they die without a will.” says Will Aid campaign manager, Shirley Marsland. “The biggest problem is that people assume that their spouse will automatically receive everything. That is not necessarily the case – there is no guarantee that they will even have the house. It’s even more of a problem if you and your partner are not married.

All these problems can be resolved if people make a Will. With Will Aid solicitors throughout the UK waive their fee to draw up a basic Will. Instead they ask you to make a donation to the Will Aid charities. All the money raised by the participating solicitors firms is given to the Will Aid charities to support their work.

Christian Aid, The British Red Cross, the NSPCC, Help the Aged and SightSavers International are among the charities you can support in this way.

Go on – it’s not so scary – make your will now!

Click here for the Will Aid website.

And click here for the Red Cross Scheme as one example.