Blended families are ordinary now. A second marriage, a long-term partner nobody ever got round to marrying, stepchildren who grew up in the house, children from two different relationships, grandchildren on both sides. What has not changed at the same pace is the default position the law applies when someone dies without leaving clear instructions, and that default was not designed with this kind of family in mind.
This article is about the specific problems blended families run into, rather than the general case for making a Will. The recurring theme is that the law is quite generous to a current spouse or civil partner, silent about an unmarried partner, and blind to stepchildren unless you name them yourself.
What the Law Does If You Leave No Will
If you die without a valid Will in England and Wales, the intestacy rules decide who inherits. GOV.UK's checker for who inherits if someone dies without a will sets out the current position for deaths on or after 26 July 2023.
- If there is a surviving husband, wife or civil partner and the estate is worth up to £322,000, GOV.UK states that the husband, wife or civil partner gets all of the estate.
- If there is a surviving husband, wife or civil partner and children, and the estate is worth over £322,000, the surviving spouse or civil partner gets the first £322,000 of the estate, known as the statutory legacy, all of the personal possessions of the deceased, and half of the rest of the estate.
- The children of the deceased are entitled to a share of the half of the estate above £322,000.
- On who counts as a child, the same GOV.UK checker states that the category includes legally adopted children and their descendants, but does not include stepchildren and their descendants.
Read those points together and the difficulty in a blended family becomes obvious. A second spouse can end up with the great majority of an estate, or all of it, while children from a first relationship receive nothing or very little. Equally, a stepchild you raised, paid for and thought of as your own inherits nothing under intestacy unless you legally adopted them.
And if you are not married or in a civil partnership, the intestacy rules do not give your partner an automatic entitlement. A Will is the reliable way to provide for them. In some circumstances a cohabitant or dependant may be able to ask a court for provision from the estate, but that requires a claim and does not guarantee an award.
Getting Married Cancels the Will You Already Have
This is the single most common gap we see in a second marriage, and it is easy to miss. GOV.UK's guidance on updating a Will lists the events that should prompt a review and says of one of them, plainly: 'getting married (this cancels any will you made before)'.
So the careful Will you made after your divorce, dividing everything between your children, will generally stop having effect when you remarry. Unless a new Will is made, your estate falls back to the intestacy rules, and those rules now favour your new spouse. There are narrow exceptions where a Will was specifically drafted in expectation of a particular marriage, which is exactly the sort of thing worth checking rather than assuming. People who believed they had already dealt with all of this are frequently the ones who have not.
Separation and divorce are different. GOV.UK lists 'getting separated or divorced' among the changes that should prompt you to review your Will. Separation alone does not rewrite what your existing Will says. A final divorce or dissolution does not revoke the whole Will, but gifts to a former spouse or civil partner, and their appointment as executor or trustee, normally take effect as if they had died on the date the relationship legally ended, unless the Will shows a contrary intention. GOV.UK also recommends reviewing a Will every 5 years and after any major change in your life.
The Problem With 'Everything to Each Other'
Mirror Wills leaving everything to each other and then to 'the children' feel fair and are quick to write. In a first marriage where all the children are shared, they often work. In a blended family they can quietly undo the very thing you intended.
- Once the survivor inherits outright, the assets are theirs. They can make a new Will at any time, and they are under no obligation to keep to a plan you agreed together.
- If the survivor remarries, GOV.UK's guidance is that getting married cancels any Will made before, so a Will leaving everything to your children could fall away and their new spouse could inherit under intestacy instead.
- Family relationships change. A survivor who is close to your children today may not be in ten or twenty years' time.
- Assets get spent, gifted or lent. What reaches your children depends on decisions made long after you can influence them.
None of that makes 'everything to each other' the wrong answer. It makes it a choice that deserves to be made deliberately, with its consequences understood, rather than by default.
Life Interest Arrangements: What They Are and What They Are Not
Where the tension is between providing for a new partner and preserving something for children from an earlier relationship, one option often discussed is a life interest arrangement created by your Will. In broad terms, a Will trust of this kind gives the surviving partner the benefit of an asset for their lifetime, for example the right to live in a property or to receive the income from investments, while the capital eventually passes to the beneficiaries you named, typically your own children.
The attraction is that the survivor is not left without a home or an income, and your children's entitlement does not depend on the survivor's later decisions or a later marriage. Our article on passing down the family home looks at the property side of this in more detail.
There are real trade-offs, and it would be wrong to present this as a neat solution for everyone.
- Somebody has to act as trustee, keep records and make decisions for years, sometimes decades.
- The arrangement has to be workable in practice, including who pays for insurance, repairs and running costs on a property.
- It can create an ongoing relationship between your surviving partner and your children at a time when both are grieving, which needs thinking about honestly.
- The tax treatment of trusts is detailed and depends on how the trust is structured and what it holds.
- It is not a way of putting assets beyond reach for other purposes, and it should never be entered into on the strength of a general article.
Whether a life interest suits you depends on who you want to benefit and when, how your property is owned, the size and make-up of your estate, and how your family gets on. That is a conversation, not a template.
Stepchildren: Excluded by Intestacy, Counted for One Tax Allowance
There is a genuine quirk here that is worth knowing. Stepchildren are excluded from the intestacy rules, as GOV.UK states, so if you want a stepchild to inherit you must say so in your Will. But for one Inheritance Tax purpose they are included.
GOV.UK's guidance on how Inheritance Tax works states that the normal threshold is £325,000 and that there is normally no Inheritance Tax to pay if you leave everything above the threshold to your spouse, civil partner, a charity or a community amateur sports club. A separate GOV.UK guide to the residence nil rate band explains that leaving a qualifying home to direct descendants can increase the available threshold, up to a £500,000 headline total in the circumstances described there. The additional amount starts to taper away where an estate is worth more than £2 million; it is not a cliff edge at £2 million. GOV.UK also states that if you are married or in a civil partnership and your estate is worth less than your threshold, any unused threshold can be added to your partner's threshold when you die.
For this allowance, a stepchild can count as a direct descendant where their parent is or was your spouse or civil partner; an unmarried partner's child does not count as a stepchild on that basis alone. A qualifying home or share can pass as a specific gift or as part of the residue, and separate rules can preserve relief after downsizing or disposal. The detailed conditions and the £2 million taper mean the headline figures should not be assumed to apply to your estate without checking.
A Practical Checklist for a Blended Family
- Write down who you actually want to benefit, in what order, including any stepchildren, and say so by name in your Will rather than relying on a general description.
- If you have remarried or entered a civil partnership since your last Will, it will usually have been cancelled. Check whether it was expressly made in contemplation of that particular marriage or civil partnership, and review or replace it without relying on an assumption.
- Check how any property is owned, because whether it is held jointly or in shares affects what your Will can do with it.
- Look at assets that pass outside your Will, such as pension death benefits and joint accounts, and make sure any nominations still reflect your wishes.
- Think about guardians if there are children under 18 in the household, and about who you trust to act as executor in a family with more than one branch.
- Record why you have made an uneven split. It does not bind anyone, but it removes a great deal of guesswork and resentment later.
- Tell people. Most of the bitterness we see after a death comes from surprise rather than from the terms of the Will itself.
- Review the plan after every significant change: a marriage, a separation, a new child or stepchild, a house move or a death in the family.
How AIB Estate Planning Can Help
We are a will writing and estate planning firm based in Blackpool, working with clients across England and Wales. We do not provide regulated financial advice or reserved legal services. What we do is take the time to understand who is in your family, what you want to happen and what you are worried about, then set out the options plainly, including the drawbacks, so you can make an informed choice.
In practice, many blended families need a well-drafted Will and nothing more complicated. Some benefit from a trust arrangement. A few mainly need help having a conversation with everyone in the room. If you are not sure where you stand, call AIB Estate Planning on 0800 048 7320 and we will talk it through with you.
This article is general information based on GOV.UK guidance current at the date of publication, and it is not legal or financial advice about your own circumstances. Thresholds and rules change, so check GOV.UK before acting and seek appropriately qualified advice where needed. To discuss your estate-planning aims and our Will-writing process, call AIB Estate Planning on 0800 048 7320.
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