My wife and I are getting divorced. Everything is perfectly amicable as we have just drifted apart due to work commitments, different interests etc, and have virtually been living separate lives for the past two years. We plan to sell our home and just split everything down the middle, but my brother says we should still get a formal financial order from the court. Is this really necessary?

I recently read in the answer to a question in one of your legal Q&A columns about a ‘substitute beneficiary’. Please can you explain what this in more detail and tell me whether it is something I should consider putting in my Will when I update it?

My aunt always told me she had left me ‘a good sum’ in her Will. I was her only niece, and we were extremely close as my mum, her sister, died when I was five. She had no children of her own and I spent every school holiday and many weekends with her. Her first husband died leaving her well provided for. Then she met a man on a cruise seven years ago and quickly married him. I never liked him and I felt he’d married her for her money. Now she has died and I have been left nothing in her Will, which was made recently and leaves everything to her husband. I am sure this is not what she intended. Can I challenge the Will?