Making a Will is one of the most important things you can do to protect the people you care about. But making one and forgetting about it could be almost as problematic as not having one at all. A Will that no longer reflects your circumstances, your wishes, or your family situation can cause confusion, delay, and real distress at an already difficult time.
Your Will Is a Snapshot of a Moment in Time
When you make a Will, it reflects your life as it is at that moment — your family, your assets, your relationships, and your wishes. Life, however, does not stand still. People are born, relationships change, assets are acquired and disposed of, and the people you once trusted implicitly may no longer be the right choice for the roles you gave them. A Will made ten or fifteen years ago may bear very little resemblance to the life you are living today.
The good news is that a Will can be updated at any time, provided you have mental capacity to do so.
Marriage and Your Will: Why It Is Automatically Revoked
In England and Wales, marriage automatically revokes any existing Will. If you made a Will before you married and did not make a new one after the wedding, you are currently intestate, regardless of what your old Will says. It no longer has any legal effect.
The intestacy rules will then apply to your estate on your death, which may produce a very different outcome from the one you intended. If you have children from a previous relationship, the consequences can be particularly significant.
The only exception is where a Will was made expressly in contemplation of a particular marriage — a specific provision that must be included in the document at the time it is drafted. If you are engaged and planning to marry, this is worth discussing with your solicitor before the wedding rather than after.
Divorce and Your Will: What Happens to a Former Spouse’s Inheritance
Divorce does not revoke a Will, but it does affect it in an important way. Once a final order has been granted, any gifts to a former spouse in the Will, and any appointment of that person as executor, are treated as if the former spouse had died on the date the marriage ended. Those provisions effectively fall away.
This might sound reassuring, but it has two significant implications. First, if your former spouse was your sole or main beneficiary, the gift to them will lapse and that part of your estate may fall into residue — or, if there is no adequate residue clause, into partial intestacy. Second, if they were your sole executor and no substitute was named, there may be no one with clear authority to administer your estate.
Separation without divorce does not trigger these rules. A spouse from whom you are separated but not yet divorced remains fully entitled under your existing Will. It can therefore be beneficial to review and amend your Will whilst your divorce proceedings are ongoing.
The Birth of Children or Grandchildren: Updating Guardianship and Inheritance
The arrival of a child or grandchild is an obvious prompt to revisit your Will. You may wish to include them as a beneficiary, adjust the shares passing to existing beneficiaries, or — in the case of minor children — include provision for their inheritance to be held on trust until they reach a suitable age rather than passing to them outright at eighteen.
For parents of young children, the appointment of guardians is one of the most important functions a Will can perform. A Will is the only place where you can record your wishes about who should care for your children if both parents die while the children are still minors. Without this provision, the decision falls to the courts.
As with all aspects of a Will, the people and circumstances you had in mind when you last made or reviewed the document may have changed considerably. A guardian who seemed ideal ten years ago may no longer be the right choice.
Significant Changes in Assets: Property, Business and Estate Value
If your financial or property position has changed materially since your Will was made, a review is advisable. This might include purchasing a property — particularly one held as tenants in common rather than joint tenants, where each owner’s share forms part of their estate. It might include selling a property or business that was specifically gifted in the Will, in which case the gift will fail because the asset no longer exists at the date of death, a problem known as ademption.
It might also include a significant increase in the value of your estate that takes you above the inheritance tax threshold for the first time, or that changes the planning considerations around how your estate should be structured and distributed.
Changes in Your Chosen Executors or Beneficiaries
The people named in your Will matter as much as the provisions themselves. If an executor has died, lost capacity, moved abroad, or simply become someone you would no longer choose for the role, your Will needs to reflect that. The same applies to beneficiaries. A gift to someone with whom you have lost contact, fallen out, or whose circumstances have changed significantly may no longer achieve what you intended.
It is also worth considering whether the people you named as executors are still willing and able to act. As we discussed in our earlier article on the executor’s role, administering an estate is a significant undertaking, and the right executor for your circumstances today may be different from the right choice when your Will was first drafted.
Bereavement: What Happens If a Beneficiary Dies Before You
If a beneficiary named in your Will dies before you, what happens to their gift depends on the wording of the Will. If no substitutional provision was made, the gift may lapse and fall back into residue — or, in the case of a gift to a child of yours, the Wills Act 1837 may cause it to pass to that child’s own children instead. Neither outcome may be what you would choose. A Will review following a bereavement in the family ensures that your wishes remain accurately recorded.
Changes in the Law: Inheritance Tax and Pension Rules
The legal landscape around Wills, inheritance tax, and estate planning does not remain static. The October 2024 Budget introduced significant changes to inheritance tax, particularly affecting agricultural and business property, and announced that unused pension funds will form part of a taxable estate from April 2027. These changes affect planning decisions that were made on different assumptions and may warrant a review of both existing Wills and the broader structure of an estate.
How Often Should You Review Your Will?
As a general rule, it is sensible to review your Will every three to five years even in the absence of a specific triggering event, simply to satisfy yourself that it still reflects your wishes and circumstances. Any of the life events discussed in this article should prompt a review sooner.
The review does not always result in changes, but the exercise of reading through your Will with fresh eyes, and considering whether it still does what you want it to do, is a valuable one.
How Our Private Client Team Can Help
At Fiona Bruce Solicitors, our Private Client team helps individuals and families review and update their Wills to ensure they remain effective and reflective of their current wishes. Whether your circumstances have changed significantly or you simply want reassurance that your existing Will is in good order, we are happy to help.
The contents of this post do not constitute legal advice and are provided for general information purposes only ■
