When there's no will, your estate doesn't pass to whoever you'd have wanted, or to whoever needs it most. It passes according to a fixed legal formula: the intestacy rules of England & Wales. These rules don't know your family. They don't know that your partner of twenty years never quite got round to marrying you, or that you're closer to a stepchild than to the sibling you haven't spoken to in a decade. They simply follow a list.
Two things catch people out more than any others:
- Unmarried partners inherit nothing. There's no such thing as a "common-law spouse" in inheritance law. However long you've lived together, an unmarried partner has no automatic right to a penny.
- Stepchildren inherit nothing. Unless you legally adopted them, children you raised as your own are not recognised by the intestacy rules.
The rules of intestacy, in order
Use this to work out who would inherit if you died today without a will. You may be surprised by where it lands.
If you are married or in a civil partnership
If you are not married or in a civil partnership, your whole estate passes to the first group on this list that exists:
- Your children (or their children), sharing it equally.
- Your parents, equally.
- Your brothers and sisters (or their children), equally.
- Your half-brothers and half-sisters, equally.
- Your grandparents, equally.
- Your aunts and uncles (or their children), equally.
- Your half-aunts and half-uncles, equally.
- If none of the above exist, everything goes to the Crown.
An unmarried partner. A close friend. A godchild. A stepchild. A favourite charity. None of them appears anywhere in the intestacy rules, no matter how much they mattered to you. A will is the only way to put them where you'd want them to be.
An example most couples recognise
Picture a couple who've been together fifteen years and never married. They own a home together and have a young child. One of them dies suddenly, without a will. Many people assume everything simply passes to the surviving partner. It doesn't. The estate passes to the child, held in trust, and the surviving partner, who has no automatic right to inherit, may have to make a claim through the courts just to stay secure in their own home. It's stressful, slow, and expensive, and all of it was avoidable with a will that took an afternoon to sort out.
It's not only about who inherits
Dying intestate also means nobody has been chosen to handle things. There are no executors you appointed, so the law decides who administers your estate, which can be slow and costly. If you have children under 18 and no surviving parent, there are no guardians named, so a court steps in. And an estate left to pass under the intestacy rules can even trigger an inheritance tax bill that some straightforward planning would have reduced.
The good news
All of this is fixable, and it isn't complicated to fix. A properly drafted will replaces the law's rigid list with your own wishes, names the people you trust, and protects the ones the rules would otherwise ignore. That's the whole job, and it's a calm one.
Don't let a formula decide.
A free, no-pressure chat is all it takes to see where you stand. I'll come to you or meet over video, and there's no obligation to go ahead.
Book your free consultationThis guide explains the intestacy rules of England & Wales in general terms and is not advice for your particular circumstances. The statutory legacy figure and tax thresholds change from time to time. The example above is illustrative, not a real client.