Making a will is one of those tasks that sits permanently near the bottom of the list. It feels like something for later, for people with more money, or for a stage of life that has not arrived yet.

The law, however, does not wait. If you die without a valid will, your estate is not simply shared out as those closest to you think you would have wanted. It is distributed according to a fixed statutory order known as the rules of intestacy, and those rules make no allowance for what you intended or who actually depended on you.

Intestacy is a rigid order, not a sensible guess

The intestacy rules in England and Wales come from the Administration of Estates Act 1925 and set out exactly who inherits, in what order and in what share.

According to the government's guidance on who inherits if someone dies without a will, a surviving husband, wife or civil partner inherits the whole estate where the person who died had no children.

Where there are children, the estate is split. The surviving spouse or civil partner receives the personal possessions, a fixed cash sum known as the statutory legacy and half of anything left after that. The children share the other half between them, taking their share at 18 or on earlier marriage.

HMRC's guidance on the statutory legacy records that the figure has been £322,000 for deaths on or after 26 July 2023. Earlier deaths use the figure that applied at the time, which was £270,000 from 6 February 2020 and £250,000 before that.

If there is no surviving spouse or civil partner, the estate passes down a strict order: children first, then parents, then brothers and sisters, then grandparents, then aunts and uncles. Where nobody in that order survives, the estate passes to the Crown as ownerless property, and the Bona Vacantia Division deals with any claim to the estate.

Unmarried partners are not recognised at all

The most damaging assumption in this area is the belief that living together for long enough creates something resembling marriage. It does not.

The government's intestacy guidance is explicit that partners who were not married or in a civil partnership at the date of death cannot inherit under the rules of intestacy. Nor can stepchildren who were never legally adopted, or close friends and carers, however much of the daily work of family life they carried out.

Citizens Advice guidance on wills makes the same point, and identifies unmarried couples and people with children from an earlier relationship as among those with the strongest reasons to make a will.

An unmarried partner or dependant who is left out is not always without options. The Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975 allows certain people, including a cohabitant who lived with the deceased as a partner for at least two years, to ask the court for financial provision from the estate. That is a court application, with cost, delay and uncertainty attached. It is not the same as inheriting.

Divorce and remarriage change the picture

Two life events catch people out repeatedly.

Marriage or entering a civil partnership generally revokes an existing will in England and Wales, unless the will was made in the expectation of that particular marriage and says so. Someone who marries again after writing a careful will may, without realising it, have no will at all.

Divorce works differently. It does not revoke the will, but the former spouse is treated as having died on the date the marriage ended, so gifts to them and their appointment as executor normally fail. That can leave a will with gaps, or with no working executor, unless it is reviewed.

What makes a will legally valid

The formal requirements come from section 9 of the Wills Act 1837 and are set out in the government's guidance on making a will.

To be valid, a will must be made by someone aged 18 or over who has the mental capacity to make it and is acting voluntarily. It must be in writing, signed by the person making it in the presence of two witnesses, and then signed by each of those two witnesses in the presence of the person making the will.

The choice of witness matters. A beneficiary, or the spouse or civil partner of a beneficiary, should not act as a witness, because the gift to that person will normally fail even though the will itself stands.

Government guidance also encourages the use of a solicitor where the position is not straightforward: where property is shared with someone who is not a spouse or civil partner, where there are dependants who could not manage their own affairs, where there are family members who may make a claim, where there is property abroad, or where a business is involved.

A will does more than divide money

Because a will is thought of as a document about money, its other functions are easy to overlook.

A will appoints the executors who will deal with the estate, and can appoint guardians for children under 18. It can leave specific items to named people, record funeral wishes, and make gifts to charity. It can also be structured with inheritance tax in mind: the government's guidance on inheritance tax explains the thresholds and the reliefs available, including for gifts to a spouse or civil partner and to charity.

Storage matters too. An executor needs to be able to find the original document, so the government's guidance recommends keeping a will safely and telling the people who will need it where it is.

Once a will exists, it needs revisiting. Marriage, divorce, a new child, a death in the family, buying a home or a significant change in what you own are all sensible triggers for a review. A will can be updated by a formal codicil or, more commonly and more safely, by making a new one.

Different rules elsewhere in the UK

This article covers England and Wales. Inheritance law is not uniform across the UK, and the differences are substantial rather than technical.

Scotland has its own regime, including legal rights for a surviving spouse, civil partner and children that cannot be defeated by a will. Official information is available from mygov.scot on death and bereavement and from Citizens Advice Scotland.

Northern Ireland has separate rules on making a will and on intestacy, explained by nidirect.

Anyone who lives in one part of the UK and owns property in another, or who has moved between them, should check which law will apply to their estate.