Where there's a will... there's a legacy of family harmony

Most people would be horrified at the thought of their families and loved ones using the reading of their will to declare open warfare on each other.

So how can people draw up their will in a way that minimises the chances of conflict arising?

The first thing to remember is not to die intestate, the painful-sounding condition where people pass away without having made a will.

If there is no will, a set of statutory rules known as the rules of intestacy are imposed.

Under these rules, if you have a spouse and children, the spouse is entitled to two-thirds of the estate, with the remaining third distributed among the children.

The rules of intestacy don't take into account tax planning, unmarried partners, the appointment of guardians for minor children, friends or any charitable wishes, notes Aoife Walsh, a tax manager at Grant Thornton.

But it is not enough to simply write a will in the first place. In most cases, it will need to be updated.

"Because of the tax and legal implications and changing personal circumstances, it is vital that a will is reviewed regularly - at least every three years - and always after you marry or divorce, cohabit or separate or have children," Walsh says.

Reviewing the will doesn't necessarily mean paying more money to a solicitor to change it: everything could be just fine as it is.

Websites and do-it-yourself guides to drawing up your own will without the need to pay for legal advice have flourished in recent years.

But solicitors can charge as little as €100 for wills - an outlay that could save a lot of heartache, red tape and phone calls to probate offices later.

"Very often people have homemade wills where they haven't considered their legal obligations to make provision for their spouse and children or any other family member that they had been providing for when they were alive, such as an elderly parent," says Paraic Madigan, partner at Matheson Ormsby Prentice.

Under a will, a spouse has an automatic right to a third of the estate, or one half if there are no children.

Executors are obliged to grant this share, so the spouse does not have to go to court to get it.

The person drawing up their will - legally known as the testator - should also choose any trustees with care, says Madigan, who is chairman of the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners (Step).

"The suitability of discretionary trustees is particularly important because they have legal responsibility over the assets in the trust."

One claim was made under Section 117 of the Succession Act by the three children of a first marriage in a case where the trustees included the person's second wife.

"They believed that they had not been properly provided for in the will and that they would not get a fair hearing from the trustees," Madigan says.

The judge ruled in favour of one of the children, but dismissed the case of the two other siblings on the grounds that their financial position was strong enough for there to be no moral obligation for their parent to provide for them.

"If you are going to have a discretionary trust, choosing independent trustees who are not among the beneficiaries will help avoid any potential conflict. The courts will be reluctant to go against a reasonable decision made by an independent trustee," Madigan says.

Another mistake people make is forgetting to include enough contingencies in their wills, according to Richard Hammond, a solicitor at Reddy Charlton McKnight.

"One of the important things you should do is put in clauses about what will happen if the executors or beneficiaries in your will die before you. Otherwise your will becomes dated very quickly," he says.

Nobody likes to think about death, especially their own, unexpected, early death.

But for people with children or other dependants, spending time drawing up a will correctly and as fairly as possible is the responsible thing to do, says solicitor Dermot Coyne. "You shouldn't leave your children the legacy of litigation."