Will My Girlfriend Get My Life Insurance If I Die?

Not automatically. Whether the life insurance you already pay for actually reaches your partner comes down to one thing, and it is not how long you have been together or how committed you are. It is whether the policy is written in trust naming her. If it is, she gets the money directly. If it is not, the payout falls into your estate, and because you are not married, the law does not treat her as anyone. With no will, the intestacy rules send your money to your blood relatives, and an unmarried partner does not appear anywhere on that list.

This is the surprise that floors people. You took the policy out for her. You pay the premium every month for her. But an insurer pays according to the paperwork, not according to what you meant, and "we have been together fifteen years" is not paperwork. There is no such thing as a common-law wife or husband anywhere in the UK. Being someone's long-term partner, and even being named as their next of kin at the hospital, gives you no automatic right to a penny they leave.

The good news is that the fix is quick and usually free. This page follows exactly where an untrusted payout goes — into your estate, down the intestacy list to relatives you may barely see, through the tax sum and past your creditors — and then shows what writing the policy in trust changes, and how to do it.

The short answer depends entirely on the paperwork

A life insurance policy on your own life can pay out in one of two ways. Either it is written in trust, in which case the proceeds go to the trustees for the people you named and never touch your estate; or it is not, in which case the money is paid to your personal representatives and becomes part of your estate like any other asset. Nothing about your relationship changes which of those happens. The trust form does.

Most people never think about this because they assume a life policy simply "goes to" whoever they had in mind. That is closer to how things work in some other countries, where you name a beneficiary directly on the policy. In the UK, the mechanism that ties the payout to a particular person is the trust. Without it, you have not named your partner as anything the insurer or the law will act on — you have simply added a sum of money to your estate and left the rules to decide where it lands.

The same misunderstanding turns up in the other things people expect to pass to a partner. Being described as her partner, or her emergency contact, or her next of kin carries no legal weight when it comes to money, as we set out in the piece on why "next of kin" means nothing if you are not married. It is a description, not a legal status.

What happens to an untrusted payout: it lands in your estate

If the policy is not in trust, the insurer pays the money to your estate. From that moment it is treated exactly like your savings, your car or your share of the house: a pool of assets that has to be gathered in, used to pay off what you owe, taxed if it is large enough, and then distributed according to your will or, if you left none, according to a fixed statutory order.

The immediate consequence is that the money you intended for your partner is now caught up in a process that was never designed with her in mind. It cannot be handed to her because a grieving relative decides it should be. The personal representatives have a legal duty to deal with the estate correctly, which means paying debts and tax first and distributing to the legally entitled people second. Your partner's need does not enter into it.

Down the intestacy list: where the money actually goes

If you have no will, the intestacy rules take over, and they follow a strict order of blood and marriage. In England and Wales the estate goes first to a spouse or civil partner and children. If there is no spouse, it goes to children in equal shares; if no children, to parents; then to brothers and sisters; then to half-siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and eventually, if no relative can be found, to the Crown.

An unmarried partner is not on that list at any point. A woman who shared your home, your bills and your bed for two decades ranks below a sibling you have not spoken to in years, and below parents who may not have approved of her. The money you paid in every month to protect her can end up with people you never intended to benefit, entirely lawfully.

There is one route back, and it is not a comfortable one. A cohabiting partner can make a claim against the estate under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975, if they lived with the deceased as a couple for at least two years before the death or were being maintained by them. But this is a court claim, not an entitlement. It is discretionary, it has a short deadline, it costs money and takes time, and its outcome is never guaranteed. It is the legal equivalent of trying to climb back through a window because you were locked out of the front door — possible, but no way to plan a life.

The tax the estate pays on the way through

An untrusted payout does not just risk going to the wrong people. If the estate is large enough to be taxable, the payout swells the total the tax is calculated on. Every pound of life insurance that lands in your estate is a pound added to its value for inheritance tax.

Married couples and civil partners have a shield here that unmarried couples do not: anything left to a spouse passes free of inheritance tax under the spouse exemption. There is no equivalent for a partner. Whatever you leave a cohabitee counts against the ordinary tax-free threshold, and above it the estate is taxed. The residence nil-rate band, the extra allowance for a home, does not rescue the situation either, because it only applies where the property passes to direct descendants such as children — a partner does not qualify.

The tax-free threshold, the nil-rate band, is £325,000, and inheritance tax is charged at 40% on the value of an estate above it. So a life policy that pushes a modest estate over that line can trigger a tax bill on money you specifically set aside for your partner — a bill that a trust would have avoided entirely.

Source: GOV.UK, How Inheritance Tax works: thresholds, rules and allowances, published under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Creditors and the wait for probate

Two more things happen to money sitting in your estate, and both hurt the person you were trying to help. The first is that your debts are paid out of it before anyone inherits. If you owed money — a loan, a credit card, a business debt — the estate settles it first, and the life insurance you meant for your partner can be swallowed paying off creditors. We have followed exactly that scenario in the piece on whether a life payout goes to creditors instead of the family, and a trust is what keeps the money out of their reach.

The second is delay. Money in an estate is usually locked until the personal representatives obtain a grant of probate, which regularly takes months. During those months your partner still has to pay the rent or the mortgage, the bills and the funeral, out of her own pocket, while the money meant to cover them sits untouchable. A policy in trust pays the trustees without waiting for a grant, which is often the whole point of arranging one — the survivor has money in hand in the weeks when she needs it most, not next year.

What writing the policy in trust changes

Putting the policy in trust flips almost every problem on this page. The proceeds are paid to your trustees for your named beneficiary — your partner — and never form part of your estate. That single change means the money bypasses the intestacy rules and goes to her, sits outside the estate so it normally falls out of the inheritance tax calculation, is beyond the reach of your creditors, and is paid without waiting for probate.

In other words, the same policy you already pay for stops being an asset the law fights over and becomes a private arrangement that does what you intended. You choose the trustees, you name your partner as the person to benefit, and the insurer pays them directly when the time comes. For an unmarried couple it is close to the most useful piece of paperwork you can complete, and it is the standard answer to the question of who gets the life insurance if there is no will.

The same blind spot exists across the rest of an unmarried couple's finances, which is worth checking at the same time. Whether your partner receives anything from your pension is a separate question with its own rules, covered in the guide to whether you are entitled to a partner's pension if you never married, and a workplace death-in-service payout has its own trap, set out in why an unmarried partner has no automatic claim to it. Each is fixed by a nomination or an expression of wish, and each is worth an hour of your time.

How to put an existing policy in trust

This is easier than it sounds. Ask your insurer for their trust form — most provide one free, and completing it takes minutes. You name the trustees, the people who will hold and pass on the money, and the beneficiaries, the people who get it, then sign and return it. There is usually no cost and no need for a solicitor for a straightforward case, though advice is worth taking where the situation is more complicated, such as children from a previous relationship or a taxable estate.

It is particularly worth checking any policy taken out years ago, especially one arranged when a previous partner or spouse was on the scene, because an old trust or nomination may still name the wrong person entirely. If you are arranging cover for the first time, you can get life insurance quotes from an FCA-authorised broker and have the policy set up in trust from the outset, so the payout is pointed at your partner from day one rather than fixed later.

Scotland and Northern Ireland. The trust route works throughout the UK, but the rules the payout would otherwise fall into differ. Scotland has its own intestacy system, with prior rights and legal rights that treat a spouse and children differently again, and a surviving cohabitant there has a separate, discretionary claim against the estate that must be made to the court within a short, strict deadline. Northern Ireland runs its own succession law, and an unmarried partner's standing under it is set out in our guide to an unmarried partner's position in Northern Ireland. In none of the three systems does an unmarried partner inherit automatically, which is exactly why writing the policy in trust matters wherever you live. The wider picture is in our guide to dependants and unusual family shapes.

Frequently asked questions

Will my life insurance automatically pay my unmarried partner?

Only if the policy is written in trust naming her, or your will leaves it to her. Otherwise the payout falls into your estate, and without a will the intestacy rules send it to your children, parents or siblings. An unmarried partner appears nowhere on that statutory list, however long you have been together.

Does the payout get taxed?

A payout inside your estate counts towards its value for inheritance tax, and there is no spouse exemption for an unmarried partner. Written in trust, the money is normally outside the estate, is paid to the trustees without waiting for probate, and reaches your partner far sooner and usually without an inheritance tax charge on it.

How do I put an existing policy in trust?

Ask the insurer for their trust form. Most provide one free and it takes minutes to complete: you name trustees and beneficiaries, sign it and return it. It is worth checking any policy taken out years ago, particularly one arranged when a previous partner was in the picture, in case it still names the wrong person.