I sat with the children from a first marriage recently. Their father had remarried. For over a decade, they were one blended family. The father and his new wife owned a house worth £800,000. He always told his own children, 'My half is for you when I'm gone.' It was a promise they trusted.
He died after a sudden illness. His will was 25 years old. It left everything to his first wife, who had already passed away. This meant the will failed. The rules of intestacy took over. His second wife was legally entitled to the first £270,000 of his assets, plus half of everything else. His children, who were promised half the house, stood to inherit a fraction of what they expected. His promise was legally worthless.
A Promise is Not a Plan
The two sets of children and their stepmother were now in a legal dispute. A family that once shared Sunday lunch was communicating through solicitors' letters. The process took 22 months. It cost the estate over £95,000 in legal and court fees. In the end, they reached a settlement. The stepmother had to re-mortgage the home to pay the children a sum that was far less than their father's promise. The relationships are gone. The money was wasted. This is the real cost of inaction.
The Right Structure is a Firewall
This was a failure of planning, not of people. A correctly drafted will could have prevented this for about one percent of the final legal bill. A Life Interest Trust, written into his will, would have protected everyone. It would have allowed his wife to live in the home for the rest of her life, secure. On her death, his half-share of the property would have passed directly to his children, exactly as he intended. The trust acts as a firewall. It contains the asset and directs it where it needs to go, removing ambiguity and preventing conflict.
For blended families in the UK, this is the fundamental conversation. You must decide how to provide for your new partner while protecting the inheritance for your children.
These situations are difficult, but the solutions are not. If this story feels close to home, it is time for us to talk.
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Written by Sean Kiani, Estate Planner at Inheritance Made Simple. Sean writes and reviews the firm's guidance on estate planning, wills, trusts and inheritance tax, and works with families across Bournemouth, Poole, Dorset and Central London. Verify Sean's Society of Will Writers membership listing.