Do I Need a Will? What You Should Know Before Writing One

Most of us know we should have a Will, but we may have found a reason not to get round to it – it feels like something to deal with later, when life is a bit more settled. The trouble is, later has a way of not arriving. If you have been putting it off, or are not sure whether you actually need one, this is a good place to start.

What a Will does

A Will is a legal document that sets out your wishes for your estate – your property, savings, possessions and other assets – when you die. It names your beneficiaries, appoints executors to carry out your instructions and can record your wishes for who should care for your children when you are no longer here. This is one of the most important things a Will does for parents. Without it, the courts have no indication of your wishes when making decisions about your child’s care. A Will does not guarantee your choice will be followed, but it gives those dealing with such decisions a clear starting point. If you have already read our earlier piece on Why you should not delay writing your Will, some of this will be familiar. This blog goes further into some of those areas – including common misconceptions and the situations where the absence of a Will causes real damage.  

Wills are not just for older people or those with significant assets. If you have anyone who depends on you, or assets you would want to go to specific beneficiaries rather than ‘by default’ to whomever the law dictates, a Will is most certainly relevant to you.

The most common reason people give for putting it off is that they are too young. Age is not the right consideration, though. A Will matters from the moment you have people who depend on you or assets where you care about their destination – and that can be true at twenty-five as much as at sixty-five. The legal requirement to make a Will is simply that you are eighteen or over and of sound mind. Beyond that, there is no minimum age at which a Will starts to matter.

There is a similar assumption that Wills are only for people with significant wealth. They are not. A Will is the only way to ensure that your personal possessions go to the people you want. Additionally, if you have children, a Will is about far more than money – it is the document where you record who you want to raise them if something happens to you.

Choosing your executors

An executor is the person who administers your estate – dealing with banks, applying for probate, paying debts and distributing what remains. Most people appoint a close family member or trusted friend. For a straightforward estate, that works well. Where there is property, business interests or any likelihood of disagreement between beneficiaries, it is worth thinking carefully about whether a professional executor or co-executor would be more appropriate. Your solicitor can advise on this as part of the Will-drafting process.

With the laws around inheritance tax (IHT) set to change in April 2027, there are potentially even more considerations and complex arrangements that will fall to the executor. You may want to document permission for them to seek professional advice to support them in the execution of your wishes.

What happens if you die without a Will

If you die without a valid Will, the law decides what happens to everything you own. This is called dying intestate, and the rules that apply – the intestacy rules – follow a fixed order of priority that bears no relation to your wishes or the people who actually matter to you.

The most common misconception is that a spouse automatically inherits everything. Under the Rules of Intestacy in England and Wales, that is not the case.

A surviving spouse receives personal possessions, the first £322,000 of the estate, and half of anything above that threshold. The other half passes directly to the children, including children who are still young (where it would be placed in Trust until they turn eighteen). This could mean a surviving spouse having to raise funds or release a significant share of the family home at a difficult time. Most couples, when they find this out, are very surprised.

If inheritance tax is also a consideration, our piece on whether to gift money to your children now or wait may be worth reading alongside this one.

Unmarried partners (however long the relationship, however many years you have shared a home) receive nothing under intestacy rules. Neither do stepchildren. The intestacy rules apply only to legally-recognised relationships.

Blended families and second marriages

For families that are more complex (second marriages, stepchildren, children from previous relationships and similar arrangements) a Will is essential.

What many people don’t know is that marriage automatically revokes an existing Will in England and Wales. Someone who made a Will before a second marriage and never updated it is leaving their estate to the intestacy rules, which may bear no resemblance to what they wanted.

Even with a valid Will, leaving everything to a new spouse may inadvertently cut out children from a previous relationship. Balancing the needs of a surviving partner with provision for children from an earlier marriage requires careful drafting. Trust structures can help in these situations – your solicitor can explain the options. Careful drafting also reduces the risk of a Will being contested after you are gone. This is one reason to be cautious about online Will-writing services. A Will that looks complete may contain gaps a solicitor would have caught … and by the time those gaps come to light, it is too late to fix them.

Updating a Will after significant life changes

A Will is not a one-time task. Life changes and a Will that reflected your situation perfectly ten years ago may no longer do so now.

Divorce does not revoke a Will automatically. When a marriage ends, any gifts you left to a former spouse are treated as having lapsed, as if they had died on the date the marriage was dissolved. If you had appointed them as executor, the same applies and that role lapses. The rest of your Will remains valid, but it is left with gaps. The person you named to manage your estate is no longer in that role, and any assets intended for them need to go somewhere else. Without a new Will, those questions are left unanswered – and the answers the law provides may not be the ones you would choose.

Marriage, separation or divorce, the birth of a child, a significant change in assets, or a change in your relationship with a named beneficiary are all reasons to review what you have in place.

Revisiting a Will every three to five years, or after any major life change, is sensible practice.

If you are wondering whether changes can still be made after someone has died, our piece on Whether a Will can really be changed after the person dies explains how a Deed of Variation works.

Digital assets

Digital assets are something most people have not yet thought about when it comes to their estate and the law has only recently caught up.

The Property (Digital Assets etc) Act 2025, which came into force in December 2025, formally recognised digital assets – including cryptocurrency – as personal property under English law. That means they can now be:

(i) included in a Will
(ii) held in trust
(iii) considered as part of inheritance tax planning

However, it is worth noting that not all digital assets are straightforwardly inheritable. Digital assets don’t automatically pass under a standard “personal possessions” gift in a Will – they need to be specifically named, because they are intangible and fall outside the legal definition of personal chattels. Streaming accounts and software licences, for instance, are not property – they are permissions to use a service, and most cannot be transferred on death. Whether a particular digital asset can form part of your estate depends on its nature as well as the terms of its platform or provider.

Cryptocurrency aside, executors cannot access most online accounts without login credentials or prior knowledge that such assets exist. Some platforms have legacy contact features, but most do not. A Will should either name digital assets specifically or be accompanied by a secure record of accounts kept with your Will documents so that the people dealing with your estate are not left searching for login details and passwords.

The emotional case

Families where there is no Will, or a poorly drafted one, face real difficulty at an already painful time. At the moment when people most need to focus on each other, they can instead find themselves dealing with legal paperwork, conflicting ideas about what someone intended, and sometimes decisions that will have to be made by a solicitor or the courts. Uncertainty about what the person you have lost wanted – or disputes between family members about how to interpret it – can cause lasting damage to relationships.

A clear, well-drafted Will protects your estate and it protects the people you leave behind from carrying that uncertainty on top of their grief. Writing a Will is an act of care. It is a way of saying “I thought about this, and I made it as straightforward as I could for you.”

Will Aid

November is Will Aid month – a national initiative that brings together solicitors and some of the UK’s best-known charities to encourage people to get their affairs in order. It is a goal we share. so that fewer people put off a conversation they know is overdue. If this month is the prompt you needed, we would be glad to help.

At KJS, our Wills and estate planning team works with people at every stage of life – from a first Will to complex estates and second marriages. Our ecosystem of care supports families through some of the most important decisions they will make. If you would like to talk through what you need, we would invite you to get in touch to arrange a free initial consultation.