A default gift in your Will covers a situation where a particular gift cannot be given to the person known as a beneficiary that was initially chosen for it. This may include, for example, if your entire immediate family was to die in the same incident.

For instance, if you have chosen to leave a gift for example of your residuary estate to specific beneficiaries, the interview will ask you who you would like to receive your assets if none of your first choice of beneficiaries survive you. This is known as a Default Gift.

You can choose:

You will also be asked, in the event that a beneficiary fails to survive you, but has children of their own, whether you would like your estate to pass down to their children and at what age.

Your Will For Good does not enable you to have as a default beneficiary any person to whom you are leaving a life interest in property. If you wish to consider an arrangement such as this you will need to obtain expert legal advice from one of our panel firms.

Your Will For Good will automatically include an ultimate default gift in favour of charities. This clause will only ever take effect if all other named beneficiaries you have chosen to inherit die before you. The Ultimate Default Gift clause ensures that your Will does not fail which would result in your estate then being distributed according to the intestacy rules; but rather would pass to those charities selected by your Trustees.

You can nominate which specific charities are to benefit but, as it is very unlikely that the gift will ever become a reality, it is more common to leave it to your executors to decide on the precise charities at the relevant time.