Why a Standard Will Is Not Enough for a Farming Family

Plenty of Irish farmers have a will — short, old, and drafted as if the estate were a house and a bank account. On a farming estate, that document routinely produces fragmented ownership, a stranded successor, a probate that limps, and litigation between siblings. The problem is not having no will; it is having a will that never engaged with the farm.

What Standard Wills Miss

• The successor: no clear devise of the lands, dwelling, stock, machinery and entitlements as one working unit — and no substitution if the successor predeceases or steps away;
• The legal right share: a spouse’s statutory entitlement (one-third where there are children) applies regardless of the will’s words — unplanned, it can force outcomes across the farm;
• Non-farming children: no realistic provision from non-farm assets, sites, charges or policies — the raw material of Section 117 claims;
• Executors and powers: nobody empowered to run the farm through administration — stock, lettings, schemes and insurance in limbo;
• The deed-will mismatch: wills drafted before a lifetime transfer, still devising land the estate no longer owns and silent on the rights the deed reserved.

What a Farm Will Does Instead

It is drafted from the folio out: the holding devised as a unit to the successor; the spouse provided for in a structure that coexists with the farm passing intact; the other children provided for deliberately, with the reasoning recorded; executors chosen and empowered to farm; entitlements, stock and machinery dealt with expressly; and the whole document dovetailed with any transfer, partnership or lease the family has in place. Where capacity planning belongs alongside it — and it almost always does — an Enduring Power of Attorney is made at the same appointment.