What the subject covers
Wills and the Administration of Estates sits in FLK2 Session 1, alongside Trusts, Land Law and Solicitors Accounts. It divides into four blocks that questions move between freely: whether the will works, who takes the estate, how the personal representatives get authority, and what tax is due.
Validity and interpretation
- Capacity and intention: the test for testamentary capacity, knowledge and approval, and the effect of undue influence or fraud.
- Formalities: writing, signature, and two witnesses present at the same time — plus the consequence of a beneficiary witnessing, which voids the gift rather than the will.
- Revocation and alteration: by a later will or codicil, by destruction with intention, and automatically on marriage or civil partnership; the effect of divorce on gifts and appointments.
- Interpretation: how the will speaks from death, what happens to a gift of property the testator no longer owns, and the effect of a beneficiary dying first.
Who takes what
The intestacy rules are the most reliably examined arithmetic in FLK2. Know cold how the estate divides where there is a surviving spouse with issue and where there is not, the statutory legacy, the statutory trusts for issue, and the order of relatives when nobody closer survives.
Then the failures: gifts that lapse, ademption, disclaimers, forfeiture, and the operation of the rule that saves gifts to a deceased child’s own children. Finally, claims under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975 — who can apply, the time limit, and the standard of provision that applies to a spouse as against everyone else.
Grants of representation
Which grant is needed — probate where there is a will and a willing executor, letters of administration with the will annexed where there is not, and simple letters of administration on intestacy — and who has the right to apply in each case, in what order of priority.
Around that sit the practical steps: the papers required, the oath or statement of truth, the property that can be dealt with without a grant, and the effect of a grant once issued.
Inheritance tax
Examined at the level a solicitor advises on, not at the level a specialist computes:
- The nil rate band, its transfer between spouses and civil partners, and the residence nil rate band.
- Exempt beneficiaries — spouse, charity — and the effect of exemption on the available bands.
- Lifetime transfers: potentially exempt transfers, chargeable lifetime transfers, the seven-year rule and taper, and the annual and small-gift exemptions.
- Business property relief and agricultural property relief in outline, and who bears the tax.
The on-screen calculator is provided, so the arithmetic is not the difficulty. Selecting the right band and the right rate is.
Administering the estate
The personal representatives’ duties and powers: collecting assets, paying debts in the statutory order where the estate is insolvent, the power to appropriate, the power to sell, protection against unknown claims by advertising, and the position of a beneficiary who wants their share early.
Liability matters too — a personal representative who distributes before advertising, or who pays the wrong person, is a standard question, and the answer is usually about the steps that would have protected them.
Where the marks go
- Intestacy with a spouse and children. The single most common calculation, and the one most often done from a half-remembered version of the rules.
- Which nil rate band applies. Residence nil rate band conditions, and transfers from a predeceased spouse.
- Witness beneficiaries. The gift fails, the will survives.
- Money in the client account. Estate administration is one of the two contexts Solicitors Accounts is examined in, so expect questions that are really about client money.
The rest of the paper is mapped in the FLK2 subject guide, and the neighbouring subject — Trusts — shares enough ground that the two are best revised together.