As part of my divorce settlment I made a loan to my wife to enable her
to buy a better house than she could otherwise afford. This loan is
secured by a charge on the house. the divorce was about 10 years ago.
We have two adult children.

In my will, can I leave the debt to the children?

Is these a standard way of wording such a bequest or do I need to
consult a solicitor?

thank you for any advice anyone cares to offer,

Robert Laws

On Mar 11, 5:00 pm, RobertL wrote:
As part of my divorce settlment I made a loan to my wife to enable her
to buy a better house than she could otherwise afford. This loan is
secured by a charge on the house. the divorce was about 10 years ago.
We have two adult children.

In my will, can I leave the debt to the children?
Yes (provided that there isn't a clause in the original loan agreement
that the loan is treated as discharged on your death).

Is these a standard way of wording such a bequest or do I need to
consult a solicitor?

Well, assuming that you are leaving the balance of your estate to be
divided equally between your children, you don't /need/ to say
anything about the loan in the will - it is just one part of your
estate.

On the other hand, this strikes me as being just sufficiently
complicated (the asset can't be liquidated, your ex-wife might cause
issues, not to mention any other partners of the parties) that it
would be worth getting a solicitor to draw up the will.

In article ,
RobertL wrote:

As part of my divorce settlment I made a loan to my wife to enable her
to buy a better house than she could otherwise afford. This loan is
secured by a charge on the house. the divorce was about 10 years ago.
We have two adult children.

In my will, can I leave the debt to the children?

Is these a standard way of wording such a bequest or do I need to
consult a solicitor?

thank you for any advice anyone cares to offer,

Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer and this advice is free 8-)

The executor would treat the debt, if it can be proved to exist (which
the charge on the house presumably does), as an asset of the estate.

Perhaps an important question to ask is: do your children wish for you
to do this? They're the ones who'll have to deal with the situation
thus constructed.

-patrick.