Given the degree of fascination with tabloid media and gossip magazines have with the demise of celebrities, you could be forgiven if you believed that death was no longer the taboo subject of old. The fact is that most people die without having made a will which often results in significant family and tax difficulties.
During last year's National Will-Writing Week, statistics emerged to suggest that 70% of the country's population had not set down how they wanted their assets and family members to be looked after when they died.
This widespread reluctance to make a will should give great cause for concern.
Some people wrongly assume that, on death, all their assets are simply and automatically transferred to their spouse or partner. Both in family and probate law, the myth of the common-law husband or wife persists.
The Intestacy Rules which apply today were set out in the Administration of Estates Act in 1925 and do not, therefore, take account of modern family life.
Many don't appreciate that dying intestate and unmarried can mean a large proportion of any assets passing instead to estranged siblings or parents, something which in life they would expressly not want to happen.
Even those who have gone to the trouble of making a will can find out that they and their relatives do not necessarily have peace of mind. The Legal Services Board has published proposals at the end of the lengthy and thorough inquiry into the provision of Will writing services in the UK.
If not alarmed sufficiently by incidents of fraud and deception, it discovered that one-in-five Wills contained basic errors which could lead to significant problems, including hefty inheritance tax bills.
Some of those, the Legal Services Board discovered, had been drafted by non-lawyers and so, in an attempt to have uniform standards of protection for consumers, it has recommended that will-writing becomes a regulated profession.
Wills are very important in clearly setting out how someone wants their assets to be disposed of when they die and in a tax efficient manner too. They can be simple, inexpensive documents. Only those estates which require trusts or complex tax planning result in high fees and, even those cases, the tax savings produced by wills vastly outweigh their costs.
It's crucial, therefore, to know that those actually drafting your will understand all the relevant issues and don't leave you with the risk of costly liabilities or litigation. If you had opted for someone who didn't, you might end up with an invalid document which would have been as much use if you'd written it yourself.
Preparing a Will is not simply a matter of recording someone's intentions. The course of the decade in which I have been handling wills has reinforced that it is more a case of advising an individual on what's right - or possible - for them, their family and their circumstances.
The process doesn't have to be complicated and, like prenuptial agreements, wills are not the preserve of the wealthy. Likewise, the problems associated with not having an up-to-date will in place afflict the well-known as well as the rest of us.
Amy Winehouse left a £3 million estate but no will to determine how it should be divided. Bob Marley died intestate in 1981 and sparked lengthy litigation, featured in a new documentary film about the reggae legend. The assets of both author Stieg Larsson and TV presenter Jill Dando passed to their parents and not their unmarried partners because they too had not made Wills.
If there is arguably one positive outcome from the cases uncovered by the Legal Services Board, it is that more people are likely to be aware of the difficulties of not having wills and the value of having a valid one in place - whether you live on Stellar Street or Main Street.