Eileen Lavelle discusses her most recent webinar, Avoiding Inheritance Fireworks: Navigating the Rules of Intestacy

When Joe Lander (he of the brilliant posts on LinkedIn) suggested I do a webinar on intestacies, I said, ‘Really? Will I have enough to say on the subject?’.

Joe assured me that as I have no trouble talking for hours to people about the complexities and stories about intestacies when we go to conferences, it would be a doddle.

And having been inveigled into doing a webinar for the BEST Foundation back in June 2024, I couldn’t really say no, could I?

Anyway, I enjoyed myself doing that webinar and also a podcast for Money Carer, so I leapt at the chance of wittering on again about one of my favourite subjects.

There’s just so much to say and so many stories, from bigamous marriages, murderous parents to illegitimacy.

My favourite part of writing content for a webinar is choosing the case studies (all names and dates changed to protect the families). With each case I research, there’s always a story. Some were sad, some funny, and some almost unbelievable! Almost.

Talking about who is and who isn’t a beneficiary to an intestate estate, which I do almost daily to relatives, is really interesting. I’ve come to the conclusion that you just can’t take what people are saying about their families as the gospel truth. Sometimes people don’t even know that they’re telling you porkies, it’s just what they were told or assumed was correct.

Such as an elder child of six children not knowing they were born before their mum got married, they don’t have a father on their birth certificate, they weren’t adopted into the family or re-registered and so won’t get a share of the estate of their “brother” as they are a half blood sibling not a full blood sibling.

Half blood = 1 parent in common with the Intestate

Full blood = 2 parents in common with the Intestate

The lovely Lee Brady took my scribbling and made it into the thing of beauty that is my intestacy webinar you see before you today.

However…

Things don’t always go to plan, and unfortunately, we thought this webinar was a streamlined racing cycle, but through a technical hitch, it started off as a sit-up and beg bike. We did get it running smoothly apart from the audience not actually being able to see me. Not always a bad thing, although I had got a full face of make-up so as not to scare the horses.

Juggling a phone to talk into, papers and actually delivering the webinar was a neat trick but not one I want to do again anytime soon. We‘ve ironed out the wrinkle now, so any more webinars, “What’s that Joe? ANOTHER ONE???” should be plain sailing. There are quite a lot of exercise metaphors there; the nearest I get these days to being active with being up to my ears in webinars.”

The lines of intestacy are clear, but there are still myths and legends in the great wide world of common-law spouses, stepchildren and adopted children that need busting.

The webinar gives you some pointers and best practices so you can be sure you know the full picture of the family of the Intestate (or for clients of Court of Professionals – who may need a family tree for a Statutory Will).

Above is a 13-minute video with snippets of the content, but the full 52-minute video can be viewed on our YouTube channel.