Looking Ahead
Wills, and what happens if there is not one
Intestacy rules distribute an estate by formula. The formula rarely matches what anyone intended.
Looking Ahead
Ageing parents, wills, and the planning nobody wants to start.
20 articles · updated August 11, 2026 · page 1 of 2
Looking Ahead
Talking to your parents about their affairs before you have to
The conversation is uncomfortable once and expensive to postpone. Most families postpone it.
More in Looking Ahead
Looking Ahead
Care for a parent, and who is expected to pay
The rules differ enormously by country, and almost every family discovers them during a crisis rather than before one.
Looking Ahead
The decade when parents and children need you at once
Three demands — children, ageing parents and your own retirement — arrive in the same years, and only one of them can be deferred…
Looking Ahead
Power of attorney: what it does and what it does not
It has to exist before it is needed, because the event that makes it necessary is usually the event that makes it impossible to…
Looking Ahead
The inheritance you should not build a plan around
Expected inheritances shrink, arrive late, or do not arrive. Planning as though one is certain is the version that goes wrong.
Looking Ahead
Giving during your lifetime or leaving it in the estate
The same money reaches the same people either way. When it arrives, what it is taxed at and what control you keep are all different.
Looking Ahead
Being an executor: what you are agreeing to
It is an unpaid job with legal responsibility that runs for months and sometimes years. Most people accept it without asking what…
Looking Ahead
Siblings and an estate, and where it goes wrong
Disputes after a death are rarely about the money itself. They are about unequal help years earlier, unstated promises and one…
Looking Ahead
Clearing a parent's home, in the right order
It is an emotional job with a legal sequence underneath it, and doing it in the wrong order creates problems that are hard to undo.
Looking Ahead
Retirement is not one date any more
Stopping work in stages is now common, and it changes the arithmetic in ways a single retirement date never allowed for.
Looking Ahead
Funeral costs and the decisions left to other people
It is the one expense a household is certain to face, arriving at the moment when nobody is in a position to compare options.