A Ten-Year Marriage Undone By A Twenty-Year-Old Will

A widow, and her two adult step-children. Relationships were in ruins. The final bill for legal advice and court time was over £85,000. The source of it all was one piece of paper, signed two decades prior.

The husband had made a will after his first divorce, leaving everything to his children. Ten years later, he remarried. He assumed his new wife was provided for. He was mistaken. He never wrote a new will.

A Voided Document

In England and Wales, marriage automatically revokes any existing will. There are exceptions, but they did not apply here. When he died, the law treated him as if he had never made a will at all. He died intestate. This meant the law, not his wishes, dictated where his £1.2 million estate went.

The result was a disaster. Under the rules of intestacy, his wife was entitled to the first £270,000 of his assets, plus half of the remainder. His children from the first marriage received the other half. This division fractured the main asset – the family home.

The Real Cost

The children, fearing their inheritance was compromised, forced a sale of the property. The woman lost the home she had shared with her husband for a decade. The family spent 18 months in a bitter dispute. The settlement satisfied no one and significantly reduced the estate for everyone.

This is not a rare event. Marriage is one of several life events that demand an immediate review of your will.

A simple update, costing a few hundred pounds, would have prevented this entire situation. He could have used a trust to provide his wife a home for life, with the capital reverting to his children on her death. There were straightforward solutions. He just never acted.

The paperwork of your life must keep pace with your life itself. If any part of this story is familiar, we should talk.