Moving to Scotland With an English Will

Your English will is generally still valid in Scotland. Crossing the border does not tear it up, and a will properly signed and witnessed in England will usually be accepted as formally valid north of it. So the direct answer to "is my English will valid in Scotland" is yes — but that is the wrong place to stop, because validity is not the same as outcome. Once you are domiciled in Scotland, Scots succession law governs how your estate is actually shared out, and on several points it overrides what your will says.

The gap between those two things is what catches people. A will can be perfectly valid and still produce a result you did not intend, because Scots law gives your children and spouse fixed claims that a will cannot remove, ends guardianship at a different age, and deals with your estate through a different court process. None of that makes your will "invalid". It just makes it behave differently from the document you thought you had.

This page separates the two questions — is the will valid, and what will it actually do — then goes through the specific clauses that misfire under Scots law and what to redo before any of it matters.

Validity and outcome are two different questions

A will has to clear two separate hurdles. The first is formal validity: was it made properly — in writing, signed, witnessed as the law requires. Scotland recognises a will that was validly executed under the law of the place it was made, so an English will that was correctly signed and witnessed does not become void by being carried across the border. On that narrow question, the answer is reassuring.

The second hurdle is what actually happens to your estate, and here the reassurance runs out. Distribution is governed not by where the will was signed but by the law of your domicile at death for your moveable estate, and by the law of the location for land and buildings. Move to Scotland and make it your permanent home, and Scots law takes over the distribution of your cash, investments and possessions — regardless of the fact your will was drafted in England to English expectations.

Domicile, not your postcode, decides the rules

Everything turns on a word that does not mean what it sounds like. Domicile is not the same as residence. It is the country you treat as your permanent home, the place you intend to settle indefinitely. You keep the domicile you were born into — your domicile of origin — until you deliberately acquire a new one by living somewhere else with the intention of staying there for good.

So a family that moves from Manchester to Glasgow for a two-year contract, meaning to return, may not have changed domicile at all. A family that moves intending to make Scotland home probably has. It is a question of fact and intention, not of how long you have been there or what your driving licence says, and it can be genuinely uncertain in a particular case. The reason it matters so much is that domicile is the switch that decides whether English or Scots succession rules apply to your moveable estate — and therefore whether the clauses in your will do what you meant.

Legal rights: the claim your will cannot defeat

This is the big one, and it surprises people from England because English law has nothing quite like it. In Scotland, a surviving spouse or civil partner and the children have "legal rights" — a fixed entitlement to a share of the deceased's net moveable estate (broadly the cash, investments and possessions, but not land or buildings). Legal rights apply even where there is a will, and a will cannot take them away. A child left nothing by the will can claim their legal rights instead.

The size of the claim depends on who survives. Where there is a surviving spouse or civil partner and children, the spouse can claim up to a third of the net moveable estate and the children can claim up to a third between them, leaving the remaining third — the "dead's part" — to pass under the will. Where there is a spouse but no children, or children but no spouse, the claiming share is up to a half. These are entitlements the person can choose to take; they are not paid out automatically, but they are always there to be claimed.

Source: Scottish Government, Dealing with a deceased's estate in Scotland — legal rights, mygov.scot.

For an English will this can be quietly destructive. A will leaving everything to a spouse, with the children provided for only later, can be upset by a child claiming legal rights now. A will disinheriting an estranged adult child — which English law broadly permits — cannot achieve that in Scotland, because the child can claim legal rights whatever the will says. Our fuller explanation is in legal rights in Scotland and how children can claim against a will.

There is a choice built into legal rights that matters in practice. A child cannot both accept what the will leaves them and claim their legal rights on top; they have to elect between the two. So a will that leaves a child a fair share may never trigger a claim at all, because the child is better off simply taking the legacy. It is the will that cuts a child out, or leaves them far less than legal rights would give, that invites the claim — and that is exactly the kind of English drafting, written on the assumption that a parent can leave whatever they like to whoever they like, that misfires once Scots law applies.

The guardian clause that may stop working at 16

Parents who moved to be near family often care most about the guardianship clause, and it is one of the clauses most likely to misfire. In Scotland, a child is treated as reaching legal capacity at sixteen, not eighteen, under the Age of Legal Capacity (Scotland) Act 1991. Guardianship of a child — the authority to make decisions for them — runs to sixteen, whereas an English will is written on the assumption that a guardian looks after a child until eighteen.

The practical effect is that a guardian appointment framed in English terms may cover a shorter period than you imagined, and the sixteen-to-eighteen years you were thinking of as "still a child" are treated differently in Scotland. The appointment mechanism differs too — in Scotland it sits under the Children (Scotland) Act 1995 rather than the English Children Act 1989 — so an English clause that leans on English concepts does not map across cleanly. It is worth reading alongside what happens if the guardian you named dies first, because the fallback wording faces the same cross-border issue.

Trusts and the age children take capital

English wills routinely hold a child's inheritance in trust until twenty-one or twenty-five, to stop a young adult receiving a large sum too early. Those clauses do not stop working in Scotland, but they sit on top of the legal rights rule, which changes what they can achieve. A child with a legal rights claim can take that share of the moveable estate once entitled, regardless of a trust in the will telling them to wait — the trust cannot hold back money the child is entitled to claim outright.

The result is that an English trust structure can be partly unpicked by a Scottish child exercising legal rights, leaving the will controlling only the "dead's part" of the moveable estate plus the heritable property. That is not a reason to abandon a trust; it is a reason to have the wording reviewed so the trust does the job it still can, and so you understand which parts of your plan Scots law will and will not enforce.

Confirmation is not probate

The process differs as well as the outcome. In Scotland the grant that gives an executor authority is called confirmation, issued by the sheriff court, not probate issued by a probate registry. An English will can appoint executors who then apply for confirmation, but English drafting can create friction — Scots procedure expects a detailed inventory of the estate and has its own requirements — so a will written entirely to English conventions can slow the process even where it remains valid.

There is a further wrinkle if you own property on both sides of the border. A grant obtained in one jurisdiction does not automatically operate in the other, so dealing with assets in both England and Scotland can mean two processes rather than one, as we explain in why an English grant will not touch a house in Scotland. If your estate straddles the border, that is worth planning for in advance rather than discovering afterwards.

What to redo, and in what order

The message is not "your will is worthless" — it is "have it reviewed by a Scottish solicitor before it is tested". Start with the clauses most likely to misfire: the guardianship appointment, the age at which children take capital, and any trust wording, all of which interact with legal rights and the age of legal capacity. Then check the executor appointment and how confirmation would work, since that is where valid-but-awkward English drafting causes delay.

Two further points are easy to miss. Land and buildings are dealt with under the law of where they sit, not your domicile, so a home in Scotland follows Scots rules on the property while a house you kept in England follows English rules — an estate on both sides of the border is governed by both. And Scotland treats unmarried partners differently again: a surviving cohabitant has the right to apply to the court for provision from a partner's intestate estate, within a short time limit, which has no direct English equivalent. If your situation involves property in two jurisdictions, or a partner you are not married to, those are the first things to raise with the solicitor rather than the last.

While the will is being looked at, review the money behind it. Legal rights bite on the moveable estate, so if part of your plan was to make sure a particular person — a guardian, a disabled child, a second family — was provided for, a life policy written in trust can deliver money outside the estate and outside the legal rights calculation in a way a will alone cannot guarantee in Scotland. It is a sensible point to get life insurance quotes and make sure the amount and the trust wording still fit your family after the move. One thing worth knowing early: unlike England and Wales, marriage does not revoke a will in Scotland, which we cover in does marriage revoke a will in Scotland, and the broader set of decisions is in our guide to wills, guardianship and children.

Frequently asked questions

Is my English will valid in Scotland?

A will validly made in England is generally recognised as formally valid in Scotland, so moving does not automatically void it. But Scots law governs how your estate is distributed once you are domiciled there, including your children's legal rights. Validity and outcome are separate questions, and it is the second one that catches people out.

What is domicile and why does it matter?

Domicile is the country you treat as your permanent home, not simply where you happen to live at the moment. Moving to Scotland intending to stay can change it, and with it the succession rules applied to your moveable estate — the cash, investments and possessions — which decides whether your will does what you meant.

What should I redo after moving to Scotland?

Have a Scottish solicitor review the will, particularly the guardianship clause, the age at which children take capital, and any trust wording. The executor appointment and the confirmation process differ from England too, so English drafting can cause delay even where the will remains technically valid.