Dying without a will: what intestacy means for your family

A solicitor once described intestacy to a grieving widow as "the will Parliament wrote for you, without knowing anything about your life." The widow had assumed, as many people do, that her husband's estate would pass to her automatically. It did, in the end, but only because the couple were married and the estate fell below a threshold set by statute. Had the numbers been different, or had they never married, the outcome could have been far less straightforward.

Dying without a valid will is not a rare oversight. Surveys consistently suggest that more than half of adults in the UK have not made one. When someone dies intestate, the Administration of Estates Act 1925 and the Intestate Succession rules determine everything: who receives assets, in what order, and in what proportion. The family's own understanding of the deceased's wishes carries no legal weight at all.

How the rules decide who inherits

The intestacy rules work through a strict hierarchy. A surviving spouse or civil partner stands at the top, but only if they survive the deceased by at least 28 days. If the deceased also left children, the estate is divided: the spouse receives all personal belongings, a fixed statutory legacy (a cash sum set by statutory instrument and reviewed periodically), and half of whatever remains. The children share the other half equally, held in trust until they reach 18.

If there are no children, the surviving spouse or civil partner inherits the entire estate. If there is no spouse and no civil partner, the rules move down through a sequence: children, then grandchildren, then parents, then siblings of the whole blood, then siblings of the half blood, then grandparents, then aunts and uncles. If no relative within that chain can be found, the estate passes to the Crown as bona vacantia.

Property held as joint tenants passes outside the estate entirely, by survivorship, regardless of intestacy. But property held as tenants in common, which is common in co-owned homes where shares were deliberately kept separate, does fall into the estate and follows the intestacy rules. It is worth checking how a property is held, because the distinction matters greatly.

Bank accounts held in sole names, investment portfolios, ISAs and most savings form part of the estate and are distributed according to the hierarchy above. Pension funds with a named beneficiary typically fall outside the estate and are directed by the scheme trustees, but any pension income already in payment and sitting in a bank account at death does form part of it.

The people the rules forget

The intestacy rules are entirely indifferent to the shape of modern family life. Two groups in particular are routinely exposed by them.

Unmarried partners inherit nothing under intestacy, regardless of how long they have lived together. A couple who have shared a home for twenty years, raised children together and intertwined their finances completely are strangers to each other in the eyes of the intestacy rules. The surviving partner may be able to bring a claim under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975, but that requires court proceedings, takes time and money, and produces uncertain results. It is not a substitute for a will.

Stepchildren occupy an equally uncomfortable position. A stepchild has no entitlement under intestacy unless they were legally adopted. A man who regarded his stepchildren as his own, who supported them financially and intended to leave them something, leaves them with no claim at all if he dies without a will. His estate passes instead to his biological children or, if he had none, up the statutory hierarchy to parents or siblings he may barely have known.

The surprise that intestacy delivers is not always a question of who is excluded. Sometimes the difficulty is practical. The rules may require assets to be distributed to minor children and held in trust, which can freeze funds the surviving parent needs for the household. Property may need to be sold to achieve the required division. A family that assumed everything would be handled simply and swiftly can find itself dealing with unexpected legal administration at precisely the moment when emotional bandwidth is at its lowest.

There is also the question of guardianship. If both parents die without a will while children are young, a will would normally appoint a guardian. Intestacy makes no provision for this. The question of who cares for the children becomes a matter for the courts, not the family's own judgment expressed in writing.

A will is a short document. It can be reviewed and updated as life changes. It costs relatively little to have prepared properly by a solicitor, and it allows a person to do something the intestacy rules cannot: reflect the actual relationships, intentions and values of one life, rather than a statutory average of all of them.

Keeping the will itself, along with the other documents a family needs at a moment of loss, in a place that can actually be found is a separate discipline. Glenvault is built for that purpose. You can begin organising your family's records at glenvault.com/signup.