Marriage Revokes Your Will Unless It Says Otherwise

Does marriage revoke a will UK couples have already carefully written? In most of the United Kingdom, yes, and the timing catches people out precisely because nobody expects a wedding to cancel a legal document signed years earlier. Section 18 of the Wills Act 1837 provides that marriage or civil partnership automatically revokes any earlier will, with only narrow exceptions, which means a perfectly valid will can be wiped out the moment the register is signed, leaving the intestacy rules to decide who inherits instead.

This matters most acutely when a wedding is being brought forward under pressure, for example because one partner has received a serious diagnosis and the couple wants to marry quickly. In that situation the will made in contemplation of marriage clause is not a legal curiosity; it is the single sentence that decides whether an existing will survives the ceremony or is torn up by it.

Why does getting married cancel your will

The rule sounds odd until you know its purpose. Parliament assumed, in 1837, that marriage was such a significant change in a person's life and responsibilities that any earlier will should be treated as no longer reflecting their wishes, and built automatic revocation into the Act rather than leaving it to be argued case by case. That assumption still holds today: section 18 of the Wills Act 1837 revokes a will automatically on marriage or the formation of a civil partnership, subject to the exceptions covered below. Divorce works differently and only partially cancels a will; that separate rule is set out in how divorce affects an existing will, and civil partnerships follow their own version of the marriage rule, covered in how forming a civil partnership revokes a will.

The practical result is stark. Somebody who wrote a careful will five years ago, naming guardians for children, leaving specific gifts and appointing trusted executors, can lose all of that the moment they marry, with no separate signature or paperwork required to trigger it. The will is not amended or partially affected; it is revoked in its entirety, as though it had never been made, unless one of the narrow exceptions below applies.

The will made in contemplation of marriage clause

The law provides one clear way round this. A will can be expressed as made in expectation of marriage to a named person and state that it is not to be revoked by that marriage. Where the wording is correct, the will survives the wedding intact, continuing exactly as written.

Two requirements make this work, and both are strict. First, the intended spouse must be named specifically; a general statement that the will-maker expects to marry at some point is not sufficient, because the clause has to identify the marriage that will not revoke it. Second, the intention that the will should survive that particular marriage must be clear on the face of the document, using wording a solicitor will recognise, such as "in contemplation of my marriage to [name], and I declare that this will shall not be revoked by that marriage". Get the drafting slightly wrong, for example by naming the wrong version of a name or omitting the survival clause, and the will can still be revoked despite the couple's evident intentions.

This is why a will drawn up under time pressure, perhaps because a wedding has been brought forward for medical reasons, should always be checked by a solicitor rather than adapted from an old template. The clause is a small piece of drafting with a large effect, and it is exactly the kind of detail that gets missed when people are focused on the ceremony itself rather than the paperwork around it.

It is also worth being clear about what the clause does not do. It protects the will from automatic revocation by that specific marriage; it does not freeze the will's contents against later review. Couples marrying quickly, particularly where one partner has a serious diagnosis, often want to update provisions anyway once the wedding has taken place, for example to reflect the new spouse's role more fully, to add or change executors, or to record wishes about guardianship for children from an earlier relationship. The expectation of marriage clause simply buys time and certainty; it is not a substitute for reviewing the will's substance when circumstances allow.

What happens if the will is not protected and marriage goes ahead

If no such clause exists, or it does not meet the legal requirements, marriage revokes the earlier will completely. From that point, if no new will is made, the estate is distributed under the intestacy rules rather than according to anything written in the cancelled document. Those rules follow a fixed order: broadly, a surviving spouse or civil partner receives the estate up to a statutory legacy and a share of anything above it, with children receiving the remainder, and an unmarried partner receiving nothing at all under intestacy however long the relationship lasted. For a fuller picture of how those shares actually work out in practice, see what happens to guardianship appointments once marriage cancels a will, since guardian nominations are cancelled along with everything else in the same document.

This is rarely what anyone wants, and it is particularly harsh for blended families, where an earlier will may have carefully balanced provision for children from a previous relationship against provision for a new spouse. Once that will is revoked, the intestacy rules apply their own standard formula, which takes no account of stepchildren or informal understandings reached within the family.

The same gap catches unmarried couples who marry precisely because a diagnosis has made them want to formalise their relationship, sometimes assuming the wedding itself will sort out inheritance automatically. It does the opposite: if the earlier will named the now-spouse as a beneficiary, that provision disappears along with everything else in the document the moment marriage revokes it, and the couple can be left relying on intestacy rules that, ironically, now treat them more generously as spouses than the cancelled will did as unmarried partners, or less generously, depending on what else the will contained. Either way, the outcome is decided by a fixed statutory formula rather than by anything the couple actually chose, which is the core problem a new will or a properly drafted clause is there to solve.

What if we marry before the will is redone?

Sometimes there simply is not time to arrange the clause before a wedding that cannot or should not be delayed, often because of a health situation. In that case, the honest position is that the old will has gone the moment the marriage takes place, and the intestacy rules apply from that point until a new will is signed. There is no grace period and no way to revive the cancelled will later by simply changing your mind about it.

The fix is straightforward, if urgent: make a new will as soon as possible after the wedding, ideally within days rather than weeks. A new will can be made at any time, including from a hospital bed, provided the person making it has testamentary capacity and the will is properly witnessed; the detail of how that works under time pressure is covered in making or changing a will on a short prognosis. Treat the new will as the first task after the ceremony, not something to arrange once things have settled down, because settled circumstances are exactly what a serious diagnosis does not offer.

What marriage does not affect

Not everything is swept up by section 18. A life insurance policy that is already written in trust is unaffected by marriage in either direction: it is not distributed by the will, so the will's revocation is irrelevant to it, and the trust deed continues to govern who receives the proceeds. The same is broadly true of pensions paid at trustee discretion under an expression of wish. What does need reviewing after a wedding is who those forms actually name, since a nomination pointing at a parent or a previous partner rarely reflects a new spouse's expectations, and providers will not update it automatically just because a marriage has taken place.

If a couple is marrying quickly and neither has adequate cover in place, arranging or updating life insurance alongside the will is worth doing in the same conversation; you can get life insurance quotes and ask directly about writing any new policy in trust from the outset, which avoids this whole question arising again later.

It is worth going through every policy and pension methodically rather than assuming the paperwork is up to date. Providers keep whatever nomination or expression of wish form was last completed, even if that was a decade ago and named a former partner, a parent, or a sibling, and a wedding does not prompt them to ask for an update. A short telephone call to each provider, asking who is currently named and whether the arrangement is written in trust, takes an afternoon and closes off a source of confusion that can otherwise surface only after a claim has already been made, when it is far harder to resolve.

Scotland is different

Scotland has no equivalent to section 18: marriage does not automatically revoke a will north of the border. Scots succession law instead gives a surviving spouse and children fixed legal rights over certain parts of the estate regardless of what a will says, a separate protection that operates alongside the will rather than cancelling it. Anyone moving between Scotland and the rest of the UK, or marrying while living in a different jurisdiction from where an earlier will was made, should get the will reviewed locally, since assuming English rules apply in Scotland, or the reverse, is a common and avoidable mistake; what changes to a will when you move between Scotland and England covers the practical differences. Northern Ireland follows the same section 18 position as England and Wales.

This difference matters practically, not just academically, for couples who have lived or married across the border. A will drafted in Scotland and then relied upon after a move south, or the reverse, can carry assumptions that no longer hold once a different legal system applies, and a wedding is one of the moments most likely to expose that gap. Getting local advice at the time of marriage, rather than assuming the existing will still does whatever it was drafted to do, is a small step that avoids a much larger problem being discovered only after death, when nothing can be corrected.

Frequently asked questions

Does marriage really cancel my will?

In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, yes: section 18 of the Wills Act 1837 revokes an existing will on marriage or civil partnership, with limited exceptions. Without a new will your estate is then divided under the intestacy rules. Scotland has no equivalent rule, though its own succession law still applies.

What is the expectation of marriage clause?

A will can state that it is made in expectation of marriage to a named person and is not to be revoked by that marriage. Drafted properly, it survives the ceremony. It has to name the intended spouse specifically, so a general reference to marrying somebody at some point is not enough.

What if we marry before the will is redone?

Then the old will has gone, and the intestacy rules apply until a new one is signed. A new will can be made at any time afterwards, including in hospital, so make it the first task after the ceremony rather than something to arrange next month.