The best books to help you plan your Will and fulfill your final wishes

I have been fortunate to know Matthew Hutton for decades. In his professional career, he qualified as a solicitor specializing in private client tax and became an excellent tax lecturer in this field. In retirement, he became an ordained minister in the Church of England, and during this time he has also found time to write the one book that complements my own book.

I have found it so useful in writing my own guide for my family to help them deal with my assets after I have died. I liked the pithy quotes interspersing the practical steps I should take in documenting my own position. I have sent copies of this book to some of my clients. The actor Stephen Fry said, in reviewing this book “Bravo! This is just about as useful as a book can be."

I was curious to find how Bronnie Wave became an accidental end of life carer. I found it interesting to read this was often shaped by the outlook of those she was caring for rather than any pre-fixed ideas on her part.

I congratulate Bronnie on a career she has taken to brilliantly which also brings to the reader her unique insight.

This is a fiction, fortunately, where family members are bumped off by one of their number who covets the family home in Cornwall. It provides a relief to the seriousness of my earlier choices in the vein of “Kind Hearts and Coronets” which was made famous by the actor Alec Guiness. 

I enjoyed this book co-incidentally whilst in Cornwall, the setting for this story of familial murder. It is a classic Agatha Christie style story with eight members of the Darker family trapped on a private island off the coast of Cornwall in the crumbling ancestral home they all want to inherit from their eighty year old grandmother. One of the family is a killer, changing the fortunes of the family for forever.

I was first introduced to this book early in my professional career as it described why so many houses were passed to the National Trust as families disassembled their collections of works of art and libraries of books until the house ceased to be viable in its own right. 

I also now appreciate better those stately homes that remain in private ownership and open to the public, with the unrelenting challenge families face to keep those homes going. I also recognized Hugh Massingberd as the then obituary editor at The Daily Telegraph, who took his role most seriously as often having the last word on an individual’s life.

Diagnosed with incurable cancer, this book was written by Simon Boas both as a testament to having a good death, a term I use in my book, but to also live well with the knowledge that the end of your natural life will be coming soon.

Simon was well-traveled and involved with the delivery of overseas humanitarian aid. He brings wisdom, humor, and compassion to show, without self-pity, that we can all enjoy life even in the knowledge that we will soon pass away. Simon’s book was published shortly after he died.