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In partnership with Octopus Legacy

In 2016, my Mum died suddenly in a car accident.

I’m Sam, the founder of Octopus Legacy, a place to plan for death and find support after a loss.

Losing Mum was tough: I hadn’t been exposed to death before and I was overwhelmed by grief. However, it was made even tougher because my Mum died without preparing for her death. She had no will, no funeral wishes set out, no plan in place for me and my family to follow.

I learned the hard way that dying without a plan has a significant impact on the people you love the most, who you leave behind – practically, financially and emotionally. Because Mum didn’t have a will, my family and I faced tedious hours of extra paperwork, legal admin and work, all when we needed it the least. It was expensive and stressful (the average cost of dying without a will for the people left behind is £9700). We felt so anxious that her funeral wouldn’t do her justice, that we obsessed over the details and bickered between us. Between all of this, finding the time to grieve and process what had happened was hard.

Unfortunately, I’m not alone in this experience. In the UK, we’re not great at talking about death or preparing for it, and it has a tangible human cost.

Writing a will isn’t for you. It’s for the people you love. You’ll never use it. It’s a gift you can give to the people you love to make their lives easier when it matters most.

It’s especially important to have a will in place if:

• You’re a parent or guardian of a child under the age of 18 – so you can choose who would take care of your child or children, if the worst were to happen.
• You own a home – so you can decide what happens to your home (who can live in it, inherit it etc.) when you die.
• You’re in a relationship but aren’t in a civil partnership or married – so you protect your partner, and ensure they’re cared for if you were to die first.
• You want a say in where your possessions go after you die.

The experience of losing my Mum made me realise that how we talk about death and plan for it desperately needed some life breathed into it – and founded Octopus Legacy. We offer both proactive estate planning services and bereavement services. Our mission is to inspire people to start the conversation around death and help them to begin to build their legacy.