From the moment a baby is conceived our natural instinct as a parent is to protect that tiny little foetus – and that protective feeling lasts forever.

Think of all the ways we protect our children; the loving, caring, teaching and nurturing we do from the moment they are born until they officially become adults at 18 (and far beyond that)! The feeling of wanting to look after our children never fades. They may become independent, responsible adults who no longer need our day to day support and care, but we would still do anything for them!

Some of the things we do to protect our children are very grown up things – most of us make sure we have insurance in place so that if something was to happen to us while our children are young, there would be money there to pay for their upbringing. Where we can, we save money for their future; to help with buying their first car, their university fees, their wedding or their first home. If we can afford it, we might choose to pay for private healthcare insurance for them. We do our absolute best to make sure that whatever happens, our children would be ok.

There are other very grown up things that we should all do to help protect our children:

We should make a Will (appointing guardians to look after them if we can’t while they are young) and to make sure they inherit what we want them to inherit.

We should seek financial advice as we get older to try to avoid our children’s inheritance being lost to pay Inheritance Tax after we are gone.

We should make Lasting Powers of Attorney to make sure that if something happened to us which meant that we weren’t well enough to look after our own money, they would be able to step in and help us easily without a long expensive court process.

We should consider making a Funeral Plan as we get a bit older (perhaps 50+) – this is sensible for 3 reasons:

1. To save your family money! The average funeral today costs around £4,000 but funeral costs are increasing rapidly. In the last decade they have risen by 70%, so that average price funeral could cost around £30,000 in 30 years if costs continue to rise at the same rate. If you buy a Funeral Plan today (plans range from £2,275 to £3,900) you will potentially save your family many thousands of pounds.

2. So that your family will be in no doubt about what you want at your funeral – they will have less difficult decisions to make when they are trying to cope with the grief of losing you.

3. So that the money to pay for your funeral will be immediately available. One call to the Funeral Plan company and everything will be taken care of – the Funeral Director will be contacted, and everything will be dealt with in accordance with your wishes. The money will be paid direct to the Funeral Director so there will be no need for your family to find the money to pay for everything.

So basically; by making a Funeral Plan you would be protecting your children’s inheritance (saving money so that it ultimately goes to your children, rather than to a Funeral Director to pay for an expensive funeral). You would be protecting them from the stress and upset of second guessing what you would have wanted at your funeral and finally you would protect them from the hassle of having to work out how to pay for your funeral while they are trying to come to terms with the fact that they have lost you.

A.R.K. Lasting Powers & Wills is a family business based in Stevenage; various members of the family are involved in the business in one way or another – and all those people are Stevenage people with extended family and many friends in the town. We have a passion for helping other families protect each other – be that other Stevenage families or families in all our neighbouring towns and villages.

We do this by meeting our clients (usually in their own homes so they feel as comfortable as possible discussing sensitive matters), listening carefully to people’s concerns, offering advice and recording people’s wishes. We offer jargon-free explanations and information and we give our clients time to decide what they want. What we DON’T do is pressurise anyone to do anything they are not comfortable with.

It was on a family holiday recently, that we discussed our aim to help other families to be organised, prepared for the worst – hoping that some of those horrible situations won’t occur, but wanting people to be prepared in case they do. We realised that we could link up with other professionals who provide the services we aren’t able to offer ourselves. So, if you are an A.R.K. client and during our conversation about your Will, we discover that you need some advice about your pensions, or life cover, or investments or health insurance we will be able to recommend people we trust to assist you with those matters. So that the whole spectrum of services needed to protect your family can be covered. Again, there is absolutely no pressure for our clients to use the companies we recommend, but we are pleased to be able to provide options and information to enable them to make informed choices. We also have links with the amazing charity Home Start (Stevenage) who offer a range of support to families who are struggling with the demands and challenges of being a parent. More information about their services can be found at: www. home-startherts.org.uk

The point of this blog was to explore all the ways that we may protect members of our families. There are probably many other ways that we haven’t thought of, but hopefully we have made you stop and think; to take stock and consider actions you could take that might make everything easier for your loved ones, to protect them as best you can – no matter what life throws at you and your family!

If you would like more help or advice with making a Will, creating Lasting Powers of Attorney or making a Funeral Plan, contact us today to make an appointment with one of our consultants.