Your partner gets nothing: the inheritance mistakes to avoid
No will, an unmarried partner, an old pension form or a badly timed gift. These common inheritance mistakes can cost your family dearly, and most are easy to fix.
Reviewed, edited and approved by Editor-in-chief Daniel Sköld · Updated 27 October 2026
Contents
You’ve been together 20 years. Joint mortgage, shared dog, a sofa you argued about in 2009. You assume that if you fell under a bus tomorrow, everything would go to the person you live with. Unless you’re married, in a civil partnership or have a valid will, it almost certainly wouldn’t.
Inheritance goes wrong less often because of greed than because of paperwork that was never done or was done once and then forgotten. Here are the mistakes that cost families the most, and what fixing them involves.
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What happens if you die without a will?
If you die without a valid will, the law decides who gets what. These are the intestacy rules, and in England and Wales they follow a strict family pecking order. Your feelings don’t come into it, and neither does who looked after you at the end.
If you’re married or in a civil partnership and have no children, your spouse or civil partner inherits everything. If you have children, for deaths on or after 26 July 2023 your spouse gets your personal belongings, the first £322,000 of the estate and half of whatever is left. Your children share the other half.
That sounds tidy until you do the sums. Take an estate of £522,000. Your spouse gets £322,000 plus half of the remaining £200,000, which is £422,000 in total. The children get £100,000 between them. If those children are from an earlier relationship and your spouse needs that money to stay in the family home, you have created exactly the sort of row you hoped to avoid.
If there’s no spouse or children, the estate goes to parents, then brothers and sisters, then more distant relatives. Stepchildren who were never legally adopted get nothing. If nobody qualifies, the Crown takes the lot.
Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own intestacy systems with different figures, so if you live there, check the rules for your part of the UK rather than assuming the English ones apply.
Do unmarried partners inherit anything without a will?
No. In England and Wales, an unmarried partner has no automatic right to inherit under intestacy, however long you’ve lived together and whether or not you have children. There’s no such thing as a common-law spouse in English law, though many people still think there is.
Your partner’s fallback is a claim under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975. Someone who lived with you as a couple for the two years immediately before your death can ask a court for reasonable financial provision. That means going to court, usually against your relatives, at the worst possible moment. There are strict deadlines, normally six months from the grant of probate, and nothing is guaranteed.
Scotland gives cohabitants a slightly better route: a surviving partner can apply to the court for a share of the estate. But the deadline is six months from the death, and the court decides how much they get. Either way, it’s a poor substitute for writing a will.
Living together for 20 years gives your partner no more legal right to your estate than a lodger has.
Check how you own your home too. If you own it as joint tenants, your share passes automatically to the other owner, whatever any will says. If you own it as tenants in common, your share goes through your will, or through intestacy if you haven’t made one. Plenty of couples don’t know which they have. You can find out from the Land Registry title.
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The will you made in 2004 may be working against you
Having a will isn’t the end of it. An out-of-date will can do almost as much damage as having none at all.
In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, getting married or forming a civil partnership automatically cancels any earlier will, unless that will was written with the marriage in mind. Remarry at 58 without making a new will and you’re intestate again, and the children from your first marriage may lose out to your new spouse. Scotland is different: marriage doesn’t revoke a will there.
Divorce doesn’t cancel a will either. In England and Wales your ex is treated as if they had died, so gifts to them fail. But the rest of the will still stands, and it may no longer make sense.
Then there’s your pension. Most defined contribution pensions don’t pass under your will at all. The scheme trustees decide who gets the money, guided by your nomination or expression of wishes form. If that form still names an ex-wife or a partner from three relationships ago, you’re relying on the trustees’ judgement to put it right. Life insurance and death-in-service benefits work the same way. Ten minutes on each provider’s website is time well spent.
Will my family pay inheritance tax?
For most estates the answer is no, but the allowances haven’t moved in years while house prices have, so more families are getting caught.
Every estate has a nil-rate band of £325,000. On top of that, there’s a residence nil-rate band of up to £175,000 if you leave your home to your direct descendants, which includes children, stepchildren and grandchildren. Both allowances are frozen until at least April 2030. Anything above the allowances is usually taxed at 40%.
Married couples and civil partners can leave everything to each other tax-free, and any unused allowances pass to the survivor. That’s how a couple can pass on up to £1 million without inheritance tax. Unmarried couples get neither the spouse exemption nor the transferable allowances. Leave a £600,000 estate to a long-term partner rather than a spouse and the £275,000 above the £325,000 nil-rate band could be taxed at 40%, a bill of £110,000. The residence allowance won’t help, because a partner isn’t a direct descendant.
There are other traps too:
Pensions. From 6 April 2027, most unused pension funds and death benefits will count towards your estate for inheritance tax. Pensions have long been the efficient way to pass on wealth, and that is changing.
Big estates. The residence nil-rate band is reduced by £1 for every £2 the estate is worth over £2 million, so it disappears completely for larger estates.
Gifts. You can give away £3,000 a year free of inheritance tax, plus some other exempt gifts. Larger gifts only fall completely outside your estate if you live seven more years. Give your house to the children but keep living in it rent-free and it is usually still treated as yours for tax.
Fixing it costs less than you’d think
A simple will from a solicitor typically costs a few hundred pounds. Mirror wills for couples cost a bit more. That’s small change against a court claim or a tax bill with five figures. If you have children from more than one relationship, a business, property abroad or an estate near the inheritance tax thresholds, pay for proper legal advice rather than using a DIY kit.
While you’re at it, make a lasting power of attorney, update your pension nomination forms, and tell someone where the paperwork is. For guidance on wills and estates, MoneyHelper is free and impartial. For tax planning on larger estates, see an FCA-regulated financial adviser alongside a solicitor.
In short
If you die without a will, the intestacy rules decide who inherits, and in England and Wales an unmarried partner gets nothing automatically, however long you’ve been together. Wills are cancelled by marriage everywhere except Scotland, pension nomination forms are often years out of date, and unmarried couples miss out on the inheritance tax breaks that spouses get. A properly drafted will, up-to-date pension forms and checking how you own your home will prevent most of the damage.
Andrew Ingram writes about money for men 45 and over – the years when retirement starts to feel real and the decisions get bigger. Pensions and retirement planning, investing, savings, mortgages and tax: what changed, what it means for your plans and what's worth doing about it. No hype, nothing to sell, and a clear steer on when it pays to get personal advice.
One of Midcent's writers. Spotted something? Write to andrew@midcent.uk.
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