Does anyone have any experience of school age children being left money/property in a will ?
When my Mother died she did so without a will so my Step Dad got everything and i haven't seen him since . The home i grew up in was sold and he moved without me knowing . However i wasn't a dependant at this stage so apparently not entitled .
So is it neccesary to choose someone to look after your child's monetary interests and what happens if you don't have anyone ? Any experiences would be interesting .

ps . This has happened twice in my family , so if you have children PLEASE MAKE A WILL !

Yes when I married I had two sons aged 4 & 6 so we set up a trust. We also had two daughters from his marriage so all 4 were init, it ceased to function when Sam reached 21.
Basically you set up three Trustees I had two from my side one from his side.  I had property so the will stated that whatever was left my sons would share £100K then the property would be seperated 4 ways. If any child needed say, special education, medical equipment the trustees could use the money in "their" bit of £100K for that. Index linked £100K is worth a lot more now.

When Sam the youngest reached 21 we re wrote it all, the boys get a lot more than the girls I have more property but you can protect them v. easily. But his two inherit from his family and mine from my family.

My daughter (now 14 years old) inherited money from her grandmother a few years ago. It was put into a Trust Fund, but the Trustees were the Royal Bank of Scotland. :-( Naturally they put all the money in to their own investments. We are now trying to have it all changed as we were aren't happy with this. In other words, if the RBS has serious trouble she could lose the lot :-( :-( She was written into the will, thankfully. She is about to inherit a similar sum of money from her great aunt and thankfully there is nothing in htis will about it being in any particular trust so we have more say in what happens to the money. All told (both inheritances) the money is close to a 6 figure amount, so not peanuts.

So if there is money to be inherited then please do make a will. Otherwise it will all go to a surviving spouse. If no spouse then the money will go to any surviving close relatives, but you could lose alot if there are many of you. Or the Government will inherit it if there aren't any relatives found.

Oh, and tell people where the will is :-) There is no point having a will if no-one knows it exists, or where it is. ;-)

Not everyone knows this but I was told when I got divorced that I needed to make a will as my children at that time were dependants and in law considered my chatels, so I would need to have it written into my will who was to inherit my parental rights. I don't know if this has changed? Anyway having a will makes things so much easier for everyone.