How to make a will in the UK

Intestacy is not a default that approximates a reasonable will. It is a statutory order of priority set out in the Administration of Estates Act 1925 for England and Wales, the Administration of Estates Act (Northern Ireland) 1955 for Northern Ireland, and the Succession (Scotland) Act 1964 for Scotland. Each is different, and none of them knows anything about your circumstances.

In England and Wales the surviving spouse or civil partner takes the personal possessions and a fixed statutory legacy, and where there are children the rest of the estate is split between the spouse and the children. Where there are no children the spouse takes everything. Where there is no spouse, the estate passes down a list — children, then parents, then siblings, then half-siblings, then grandparents, then aunts and uncles — and if nobody on the list survives, it goes to the Crown as ownerless property.

The gap that causes the most harm is the unmarried partner. They are simply not on the list. A couple who lived together for thirty years, raised children and paid off a mortgage jointly can find that the survivor inherits nothing beyond whatever was held in joint names, and that the deceased's estranged relatives inherit instead. There is no common-law marriage in England, Wales or Northern Ireland, and repeating that there is does not create one.

There is a remedy, but it is litigation rather than a right. The Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975 allows a cohabitant who lived with the deceased as a partner for at least two years, and certain other dependants, to apply to court for reasonable financial provision from the estate. It is a claim with a short deadline, it costs money, and it produces a discretionary award rather than the share a will would have given. Scotland has its own and narrower version, under the Family Law (Scotland) Act 2006, with a strict time limit of months rather than years.

Northern Ireland runs the same broad structure as England and Wales under its own 1955 Act, with different fixed sums and a different split between spouse and children. Scotland is structurally different again, because of prior rights and legal rights described below.

Intestacy also decides who administers the estate, not just who inherits. That job falls on the person highest in the statutory order who is willing to take it, which can mean an estranged relative rather than the partner who was actually there.

List what you own and what you owe first. Property, savings, pensions, life policies, business interests, digital assets and debts. Two things commonly sit outside the will entirely and surprise people: property held as joint tenants passes automatically to the surviving joint owner regardless of the will, and pension death benefits usually pass under the scheme's nomination form rather than under the will at all. Update the nomination with the pension provider separately.

Choose executors. These are the people who will collect the assets, pay the debts and tax, and distribute what is left. Two is a sensible number; they can also be beneficiaries. Ask them first — the role can take a year or more and carries personal liability if it is done badly. If your estate is complicated you can appoint a professional, but check the charging basis, because a percentage-of-estate fee on a house-owning estate is a large sum.

Say who gets what, and say what happens if they die first. Naming substitute beneficiaries is the single most useful clause a homemade will usually omits. Include a residue clause covering everything not specifically listed — without one, anything left over falls into a partial intestacy and is distributed by the statutory rules you were trying to avoid.

If you have children under 18, appoint guardians. This is often the real reason to make a will at all, and it is not something the intestacy rules address in a way you would choose.

Sign it correctly. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland the will must be in writing, signed by you in the presence of two witnesses who are both present at the same time, and then signed by each of them in your presence. In Scotland the will must be in writing and signed by you on every page, and a single witness to your signature makes it self-proving. Getting this wrong invalidates the whole document, and nobody finds out until you are dead.

Neither a beneficiary nor a beneficiary's spouse or civil partner should witness the will. The will remains valid but the gift to that person is void — a mistake that regularly destroys the main gift in an otherwise sound homemade will. Use independent witnesses with no interest in the estate.

Then tell someone where it is. Give the executors a copy or tell them where the original is kept. Solicitors and the probate service offer storage. A will that cannot be found when it is needed is treated as if it never existed.

Scots succession law is separate from English law and the differences are substantive rather than cosmetic. You can make a valid Scottish will from age 12, against 18 in the rest of the UK, and one witness is enough rather than two.

The most important difference is legal rights. In Scotland a surviving spouse or civil partner and any children have an automatic entitlement to a share of the deceased's moveable estate — money, shares, cars, personal possessions, essentially everything except land and buildings — and a will cannot take that away. A spouse and children can each claim a fixed proportion of the moveable estate, and they may choose between claiming legal rights and taking whatever the will gives them, but they cannot be disinherited from the moveable estate outright.

This means the standard English planning move of leaving everything to one person does not have the same effect north of the border. A Scottish will that appears to disinherit a child leaves that child able to claim their legal rights against the estate anyway, which the executor must account for before distributing.

Where there is no Scottish will, prior rights come first: the surviving spouse or civil partner takes the dwelling house they lived in up to a value limit, the furnishings up to a limit, and a cash sum, before legal rights and then the free estate are worked out. The limits are set by statutory instrument and are revised, so check the current figures rather than relying on a number you read somewhere.

Marriage does not revoke a Scottish will. The birth of a child can, in limited circumstances, give that child a right to challenge a will made before they were born. And a Scottish cohabitant who is left out can apply to court under the Family Law (Scotland) Act 2006, but only within a strict time limit measured in months from the date of death — far shorter than the equivalent English claim.

If you own property in Scotland and live in England, or the reverse, take advice. Which law applies to which asset depends on where you are domiciled and, for land and buildings, where the property is. Cross-border estates are exactly the situation where a homemade will causes the most expensive problems.

A homemade will on a shop-bought form is legally valid if it is signed and witnessed correctly, and for a genuinely simple estate — everything to one person, no children under 18, no business, no property abroad — it does the job. The risk is not that homemade wills are unlawful. It is that the failure modes are invisible until probate.

The recurring faults are the same every time: no residue clause, so part of the estate falls into intestacy; no substitute beneficiaries, so a gift lapses; ambiguous wording about which of two people with the same first name is meant; a beneficiary used as a witness; alterations made after signing without being re-witnessed; and the will simply never being found. None of these can be fixed after death except by court application, which costs far more than the will would have.

Online will services sit in between. Reputable ones handle the residue and substitution clauses that homemade wills forget, and cost far less than a solicitor. They are weaker where judgement is required — trusts for young or vulnerable beneficiaries, second families, business assets, foreign property, or estates large enough for Inheritance Tax planning to matter.

Use a solicitor where any of the following apply: you have a second family or are separated but not divorced, you own a business or agricultural land, you have property outside the UK, a beneficiary is disabled or receiving means-tested benefits, you want to leave someone out who might claim, or your estate is large enough that Inheritance Tax is in play. Ask for a fixed fee — most straightforward wills are quoted that way.

Free and reduced-cost routes exist. Some charities run schemes where a solicitor writes a simple will at no charge in the hope of a legacy, with no obligation to leave one. Trade unions frequently include a free will service for members. Some employers offer one through a benefits package. Age UK, Citizens Advice and Which? publish guidance on what to expect and what to ask.

Whatever route you use, watch the storage and registration fees rather than the drafting fee. Some will-writing firms quote a low headline price and then charge annually for storage, or appoint themselves as executor on a percentage-of-estate basis. Read the executor clause before signing — you are choosing who gets paid out of your estate.

Most estates pay no Inheritance Tax at all. There is a tax-free threshold below which nothing is due, an additional allowance where a home is passed to direct descendants, and — importantly — transfers between spouses and civil partners are exempt, with any unused threshold transferring to the survivor. The thresholds and rates are set by the Treasury and change, so take the current figures from HMRC rather than from an article.

Gifts made in the years before death can be brought back into the estate for tax purposes, on a sliding scale, and there are annual and small-gift exemptions that sit outside that. Gifts to charity are exempt and, above a certain proportion of the estate, reduce the rate charged on the rest. The mechanics reward planning years in advance rather than in the final months.

The rule people most often get wrong is giving away a house while continuing to live in it. That is a gift with reservation of benefit, and the property is normally treated as still forming part of the estate for Inheritance Tax whatever the deeds say. Doing it to avoid care home fees can also be treated as deliberate deprivation of assets by the local authority, which can assess you as if you still owned it.

A will does not control everything you own. Jointly owned property held as joint tenants passes to the survivor automatically. Most pension death benefits pass under the scheme's discretion, guided by your nomination form. Life policies written in trust pass to the trust beneficiaries outside the estate. Keeping nominations current matters as much as keeping the will current, and an ex-partner named on a pension nomination form from ten years ago is a common and expensive oversight.

A will also cannot dictate funeral arrangements with binding force — the executor decides — and it cannot bind anyone to a promise about what to do with an inheritance afterwards. If you want money used a particular way, use a trust, not a wish.

Consider a lasting power of attorney alongside the will. A will only operates after death; a power of attorney covers the period when you are alive but cannot manage your own finances or health decisions. Losing capacity without one means an application to the Court of Protection in England and Wales, which is slower and more expensive than the registration would have been. Scotland and Northern Ireland run their own equivalent schemes.

Review the will after any of these: marriage or civil partnership, divorce or dissolution, separation, the birth or adoption of a child, the death of a beneficiary or executor, buying or selling property, receiving a significant inheritance, moving between UK jurisdictions, or moving abroad.

Marriage or civil partnership revokes an existing will in England, Wales and Northern Ireland unless the will says expressly that it was made in contemplation of that specific marriage. If you remarry and do nothing, you die intestate. This is the single most consequential update trigger in British succession law and almost nobody is told about it at the time.

Divorce does not revoke a will in England and Wales. It treats the former spouse as if they had died on the date of the decree, so gifts to them fail and their appointment as executor falls away. That sounds like the right outcome, but it can produce an unintended result where they were the sole beneficiary and no substitute was named, because the estate then falls into partial or total intestacy. Separation without divorce changes nothing at all — an estranged spouse still inherits.

Do not amend a will by crossing things out or writing in the margin. Alterations made after signing are not effective unless they are signed and witnessed in the same way as the original. A small change is made by a codicil, signed and witnessed like a will; anything more than a small change is better done by making a new will that expressly revokes the old one.

Destroying the old will properly matters. In England and Wales a will is revoked by physical destruction with the intention of revoking it, or by a new will containing a revocation clause. Leaving two inconsistent wills in existence invites a dispute, which is exactly what the exercise was meant to prevent.

Finally, keep a short letter with the will listing where the accounts, policies, deeds and digital account details are. It has no legal force, but executors routinely spend months tracing assets that a single page would have identified in an afternoon.