swill453 wrote:Dod101 wrote:Yes. If there is a surviving spouse and children of the marriage, the spouse and the children (as a class) are each entitled to 1/3rd of the movable estate. The final 1/3rd stays with estate itself and is distributed according to the Will. That applies irrespective of what the Will says and the beneficiaries have the option of accepting the terms of the Will or taking their legal rights. As I keep being reminded, consideration is being given to changing this in law but no conclusion has yet been reached.
Do you know if this division includes jointly held assets? For example, if the spouses share a joint bank account, does this all go to the survivor, or is it counted as part of the movable estate to be "thirded"?
Scott.
We do not in Scotland have the concept of tenants in common as far as heritable property is concerned, that is what we call a house for instance but I do not know if the same applies to movable property. Logically the bank account would be held 50/50 just as a house in joint names is and so the deceased's 50% would go into the 'movable estate' pot. I do not though know that since as I am now on my own a joint account is unlikely and I have never needed to know.
On the subject of dependent offspring, as it happens, an uncle, my father's brother, had Down's syndrome or something like that such that he stayed at home throughout his parents' lives and when they died around the age of 80 or so he had to go into a home, so that would be an example of dependency. My grandfather left a considerable sum to look after this son, because he was relatively young when they died, around 43 or so (probably the cause of his affliction in the first place, a 'late' baby). He did not in fact survive very long after that anyway but these things happen.
Dod