What happens if you die without a will in England and Wales

If you die without a valid will, you die "intestate", and a fixed set of rules decides who inherits. Those rules take no account of what you would have wanted, who you were closest to, or what you had promised anybody. They are the same for a family in Swindon as for one in Northumberland.

Here is what they actually say, and where they most often catch people out.

If you are married or in a civil partnership

Your spouse or civil partner does not automatically get everything.

If you have no children, they do. But if you have children, your spouse receives your personal possessions, the first £322,000 of the estate, and half of whatever is left. The other half is divided between your children. Where most of the estate is the family home, that can mean the surviving spouse has to find money they do not have, or sell a house they had no intention of selling.

Anything you owned jointly as joint tenants — typically a house or a joint bank account — passes to the survivor automatically, outside the intestacy rules. That often softens the outcome, but it is not something to rely on without checking how your property is actually held.

If you are not married

Your partner inherits nothing. Nothing at all, however long you have lived together, whatever you both intended, and whether or not you have children together. There is no such thing as a common-law spouse in English law.

An unmarried partner may be able to bring a claim under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975, but that means going to court, at their expense, while grieving, with no guaranteed outcome. A will costs a fraction of what such a claim does.

If you have stepchildren

Stepchildren you have not legally adopted inherit nothing under the intestacy rules, no matter how long you have raised them. Adopted children are treated exactly as biological children.

If you have no surviving relatives

The estate passes down a fixed order: children, then parents, then brothers and sisters, then grandparents, then aunts and uncles. If nobody in that list survives you, the estate passes to the Crown.

Who deals with the estate

With a will, you choose your executors. Without one, the right to apply for letters of administration follows the same order of priority as the inheritance. That may be someone you would never have chosen, and it may be several people who do not get on.

The parts people rarely think about

• Guardians. If you have children under 18 and no surviving parent with parental responsibility, the court decides who raises them. A will lets you decide instead.
• Anything you promised verbally. It has no effect. A promise to leave a cottage to a nephew, made repeatedly in front of witnesses, is not binding.
• Charitable gifts. Nothing goes to charity on an intestacy.
• Timing. An intestate estate is usually slower and more expensive to administer, because there is no clear authority from the outset.

Putting it right

Making a will is neither expensive nor slow. Most take a single conversation, a draft to read at your own pace, and a second appointment to sign it properly in front of two independent witnesses.

If you already have a will, it is worth checking that it still works. Marriage revokes an earlier will automatically unless it was made in contemplation of that marriage — which is the most common way people end up intestate without realising it.

If you would like an honest view on where you stand, give us a ring. The first conversation costs nothing, and sometimes the answer is that what you already have is fine.