Can You Leave One of Your Children Out of Your Will?

You have decided that one of your children should get nothing, and you want to know whether the law will let you do it. In England and Wales, the short answer is yes. There is no rule here that forces you to leave your children anything. You do not have to divide your estate equally, you do not have to explain yourself, and you are free to leave a child out of your will entirely.

But "you can" is not the same as "and that will be the end of it". Leaving an adult child out does not put the matter beyond reach. That child can apply to a court under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975 for reasonable financial provision, and the court can override what your will says if it decides the exclusion left them without enough to live on. So the real question is not whether you are allowed to disinherit a child, but whether the exclusion will hold, and what a fight over it will cost the children you did provide for.

This article sets out both sides honestly: the freedom you genuinely have, and the claim that can undo it. It also covers the practical steps that make an exclusion more likely to stand, and the different, stricter position in Scotland, where you cannot fully disinherit a child at all.

The short answer: no forced heirship in England and Wales

Some countries reserve a fixed share of every estate for the children, whatever the parent wanted. England and Wales do not. The principle here is testamentary freedom: your estate is yours to leave as you see fit, and adult children have no automatic entitlement to a penny of it.

That freedom is real and it is used every day, for reasons that range from a genuine estrangement to a wish to direct everything to a child who has cared for you, or to a partner, a charity, or a grandchild. You are not required to justify the decision in the will itself, and an unequal split is not, on its own, evidence that anything is wrong.

It is worth separating two situations people often blur. Leaving a child out of a valid will is a deliberate act the law permits. Dying without a will is something else entirely, because then the intestacy rules divide your estate by formula and typically treat all your children equally, regardless of what you would have chosen. If your intention is that a particular child receives nothing, silence does not achieve it. Only a properly drafted will does. And if your circumstances change, remember that getting married cancels an existing will, which can quietly undo the exclusion you carefully made and hand the estate back to the intestacy rules.

The catch: the Inheritance Act 1975

The limit on testamentary freedom is the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975. It lets certain people who feel a will, or the intestacy rules, failed to make reasonable provision for them apply to the court for an award out of the estate. A child of the deceased, including an adult child, is one of the categories entitled to apply.

Two things about this claim are commonly misunderstood, and both matter if you are trying to make an exclusion stick.

First, for a child who is not a spouse, the standard is maintenance, not a fair share. The court is not asking whether the split was even-handed. It is asking whether the will left the applicant without reasonable provision for their day-to-day living, judged against their needs and resources. A comfortable, financially secure adult child who was left out has a weak claim on that test. A child in real financial hardship, especially one the parent had been helping, has a stronger one.

Second, being disinherited is not itself a ground to win. The applicant has to show the will fails to make reasonable provision for their maintenance, and the court weighs a list of factors including the size of the estate, the applicant's financial needs and those of the beneficiaries, any disability, and the nature of the relationship. A bare sense of unfairness is not enough. Genuine need, particularly where the parent had assumed some responsibility for the child, is what gives these claims traction.

When an excluded child's claim actually succeeds

Because the test is about maintenance and need, the outcome turns on facts rather than principle. It helps to picture the ends of the range.

At one end, an adult child with their own home, a good income and no particular need, who was left out of a large estate that went to a sibling, will usually struggle. The court has nothing to maintain, because the applicant is already maintaining themselves. Testamentary freedom largely carries the day.

At the other end, an adult child in poor health, on a low income or reliant on benefits, who had been financially supported by the parent, brings a claim the court takes seriously, even against a will that deliberately cut them out. Here the estate had, in a sense, been part of how that child kept afloat, and the law is readier to intervene.

Most real cases sit between those poles, which is exactly why they are fought, and why the result is hard to predict. The uncertainty is the point to grasp: excluding a child does not guarantee they get nothing, and it does not guarantee a battle either. It creates a risk whose size depends on that child's circumstances at the time you die, not the day you sign the will. If your reason for excluding one child is to protect provision you have made for others, it is worth reading alongside the wider problem of how an estate holds together where feelings run high, such as one house, two families and no way to split it.

What a letter of exclusion does, and does not, do

A common and sensible step is to leave a signed, dated letter, sometimes called a letter of exclusion or a statement of reasons, alongside the will. It is not part of the will and it is not binding, but if a claim is later brought, the court can read it as evidence of your reasoning and the circumstances as you understood them.

The letter earns its keep by being calm and factual. Set out the practical position: what each child's circumstances are, what help you have already given during your lifetime, and the concrete reasons for your decision. What does not help is a page of anger. A bitter, one-sided letter can read as evidence of an unreasonable falling-out rather than a considered choice, and it can hand the excluded child a narrative to work with. Keep it measured, keep it accurate, store it with the will, and update it if the family picture changes materially.

Be realistic about what the letter cannot do. It cannot stop a claim being made, and it cannot bind the court. What it can do is make sure your side is heard after you are gone, when you are not there to explain. A letter written for excluded and included children alike is a close cousin of the letter you would write to guide guardians and trustees; our guidance on a letter of wishes for the people raising your children covers the same discipline of writing something honest that others will actually rely on.

What a fought claim costs the children you did provide for

This is the part that changes people's minds, and it deserves plain language. Contesting a will is expensive, slow and corrosive, and the bill mostly comes out of the very estate the parent was trying to direct.

Legal costs in a fought Inheritance Act claim can run into tens of thousands of pounds, and a contested case can take a year or more to resolve, sometimes considerably longer. During that time the estate cannot be wound up cleanly and the beneficiaries wait. Where costs are paid from the estate, or a party is ordered to pay them, that money is gone. Every pound spent on lawyers is a pound the children you did want to provide for never receive.

There is a human cost on top of the financial one. A claim by an excluded child pits siblings against each other at the graveside, and the relationships rarely recover. So even where an exclusion would probably hold, it is worth asking whether the risk of the fight is worth it, or whether a smaller legacy to the excluded child, enough to make a claim not worth their while, would protect the others better than a clean cut that invites a challenge.

None of this means you should not do it. It means you should do it with your eyes open, ideally with a will professionally drafted so the exclusion is deliberate and defensible rather than accidental. The way you structure the rest of the estate matters too: pointing life cover and pensions through a trust rather than through the will can keep that money out of the estate that a claim would attack, so it reaches the children you intend more directly. If that is your aim you can get life insurance quotes and have an FCA-authorised broker help you arrange cover written in trust, and read our guide to wills, guardianship and children for how the pieces fit together.

Scotland and Northern Ireland

The freedom to disinherit a child is an England and Wales feature, and it does not extend across the whole UK.

Scotland is materially different. A child has legal rights over the deceased's moveable estate, meaning money, investments and possessions rather than land or buildings, and a will cannot take those rights away. A child left out of a Scottish will can simply claim their legal rights instead of the nothing the will gave them. You can disinherit a child from your house and land in Scotland, but not from their share of the moveable estate. If you made your will in England and later moved north, this shift alone is a reason to review it, as our note on whether an English will is still valid in Scotland explains.

Northern Ireland follows a model close to England and Wales: testamentary freedom, tempered by family provision legislation, the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) (Northern Ireland) Order 1979, which lets a child apply for reasonable provision much as the 1975 Act does. The financial thresholds and some procedural detail differ, but the shape of the risk is similar. Wherever you are, the safe course is the same: take advice on the law that applies to your estate, rather than assuming the rule you read about online is the one that governs you.

Frequently asked questions

Can I leave one of my children out of my will?

In England and Wales there is no forced heirship, so you can. An adult child may still apply under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975 for reasonable provision for their maintenance, and the court decides whether to make any award. Whether the exclusion holds depends largely on that child's financial need at the time you die.

Does a letter explaining why help?

It can. A signed, dated note setting out your reasons and the financial position of each child is evidence the court will read. Keep it factual rather than angry, store it with the will, and revisit it if family circumstances change materially. It cannot stop a claim, but it lets your reasoning be heard after you are gone.

What does a contested estate cost?

Costs come out of the estate or are ordered against a party, and a fought claim can run into tens of thousands of pounds and take a year or more to resolve. Money spent on lawyers is money the children you did provide for never see, which is why a clean exclusion sometimes protects them less well than a small legacy that removes the incentive to sue.