Jasmine Birtles
Your money-making expert. Financial journalist, TV and radio personality.
Five Things You Should Specifically List in Your Will
Moneymagpie Team
21st Apr 2025
It’s important for adults of every age to have a will. However, many people will use a cheap will kit to list everything to go to their partner, spouse, or children. Which is fine! But that does mean sometimes things can be undervalued or lost to people who don’t recognise the importance of what you’ve left them.
If you want to make sure you leave a legacy that will be appreciated, check that your will includes the specific details of these five things.
Collectible Items
This week, a record collection is going to auction for an estimated £80,000 – with some single vinyl LPs set to achieve somewhere in the region of £1,200 each. If you are a collector of vintage or unique items, you may have spent thousands of pounds over your lifetime curating your collection. Leaving it to people who don’t appreciate it or understand the value means they could miss out on what it’s worth, devaluing your careful work.
Some people choose to dedicate their collection to another collector. Others might wish to leave the value of it to their family, but arrange in advance who should appraise and arrange the sale of the collection. This ensures that your family won’t be ripped off by collectors or shady people looking to make a huge profit knowing your loved ones are unaware of the value of your items.
Property
Leaving your primary residence to your children adds an extra £125,000 to the Inheritance Tax bracket (£250,000 if you were married and outlived your spouse, as their allowance passes to you).
However, you should think about how the property would best benefit the ones you leave behind. If, for example, you have a partner still living with you, you can add a stipulation that the house cannot be sold while they remain living there.
If you have property that generates income, it’s worth bearing in mind how you wish to pass on the business portion of that, too. Inheriting a tenanted house comes with extra responsibilities and possibly costs, so if the person you want to leave it to is unlikely to afford this you may wish to allocate a financial provision for them. For example, if you want to leave someone your buy-to-let property that has tenants who moved in just three months before you died on a 12-month contract, the person inheriting will take on the cost and responsibility of either managing the property to the end of the contract, selling a tenanted property (and possible related capital gains from rental income received in the interim prior to sale), or finding an arrangement to end the tenancy early. If that person can’t afford any of these things, they could be lumbered with financial difficulty until they can sell the property, unless you also leave a financial provision for them in your will to cover such costs.
Pets
Many people don’t think about what will happen to their pets if they die unexpectedly. That means dogs, cats, rabbits and even fish are put into emergency care, foster homes, or shelters if there is nobody to take them on. Or, siblings might argue over who gets the family pet. Stipulate who should take on the care of your pets – and if you have more than one pet, make sure you also lay out whether you want them to be kept together or if they could go to separate new homes. Some pets will struggle to be separated from each other, on top of the grief of losing you.
Pets are a financial burden too, which is why some people choose to leave a portion of money to the pet keeper, if only to help with setup or rehoming costs.
Vehicles
Cars leased on finance might need to be paid outright or returned to the retailer. It is often possible to transfer a finance agreement to a benefactor, but they must be able to pass the same credit check as you did and afford the monthly repayments. Cars are an asset of the estate, but if they are on a finance agreement it can be better to cut losses on the repayments made to date and return the car, rather than leaving it to a person to take over.
The alternative is to leave financial provision, if you have it, to enable the balloon payment for the outright ownership of the vehicle, allowing the person inheriting to keep your car while paying it off in full.
Vehicles can also have a very personal and sentimental value, so it’s important to consider who would benefit from your car or vehicle the most. Similarly, other vehicles like motorbikes might not be suitable to leave to anyone if you don’t know any other riders – in which case, it’s ideal to have lined up your favourite second hand bike retailer to ensure the estate receives a good deal on the sale of your motorbike.
Intellectual Property Rights
If you are creative or make things, you may hold intellectual property rights. For example, writers will have an estate of written work that can still earn money after they die. Copyright in the UK exists 70 years beyond the date of death of the author – which is how some estates like Arthur Conan Doyle’s family are able to continue earning huge royalties from the works of authors who died a while ago.
The same also goes for inventions. If you own patents, make sure you know who those rights will be passed on to, and how that works for your particular type of invention and industry regulations.
Intellectual rights can be incredibly valuable to pass on, especially if you leave them to someone who is savvy and knows how to leverage them to continue making money with your works once you die. It can therefore also be worthwhile assigning in your will a specific agent or agency who should represent your estate when you die. Often, this will be the existing agent or agency you have in creative works when you’re alive. Agents will continue to receive a commission from sales of rights, which means they can benefit from your IP after you die, too. That’s why it’s important to leave your work in the hands of an agent or agency you trust to represent your works in good faith – and who you would like to financially benefit from them after you die.
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