Putting your last wishes down on paper is a sobering course of action. You will have lots of things to think about during this process – who do you want your belongings to go to? How do you want your estate to be divided up? Who do you need to consider when you are thinking about who should get what?

With this quantity of questions in your head, it’s more important that you ensure you go about things in the proper way. This includes making a copy of a last will and testament so all your bases are covered.

It’s essential that you have more than one copy of a last will and testament because most people fill theirs out and then keep it at their house. If anything should happen to it there isn’t any record of what your last wishes are.

It isn’t nice to contemplate, but this does make lots of sense. If your home should burn down with you within it, and the sole copy of a Final Will and Testament with your name on it went up in flames, no one would know what to do. You would be treated as having died without a will – even though you had one. Even if someone knew it was in the house and knew exactly where it was, the chances of it being recovered are close to zero.

If that very same situation happened and you had lodged a copy of a last will and testament somewhere safe – with your bank perhaps or with a lawyer – then your wishes would still be known. You should usually tell somebody where your will is kept in the event that anything happens to you however.

It’s important to recollect that you’ve more than one copy of a Last Testament however. Some people forget they have two, and when they make a change to the one they have at their home, they don’t make the change they have to the other copy as well.

This can often lead to all sorts of issues when the wills are found. You should also ensure you write out a completely fresh one if you do make changes, and get rid of every other copy of a last will and testament that you have. This will make things less complicated when the time comes.