Terminal Diagnosis, Not Married, House in My Name

If you are terminally ill and your partner is not on the deeds, and the two of you never married, then as things stand today she has no automatic claim to the house and no automatic claim to most of what you leave. That is the blunt position, and it is worth stating plainly because so many people believe the opposite. You have been given months rather than years. Months is short, but it is enough time to put most of this right — as long as you do it in the correct order.

There is no such thing as a common-law spouse in England, Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland, however long you have lived together. Not being named on the title means you are not, in law, an owner of the property. If you die without a will, the intestacy rules step in and hand your estate to your blood relatives — parents, siblings, children — in a fixed order that does not include an unmarried partner at any point. The fact that you have children together does not give her a share either; it gives the children one.

The part worth holding on to is that almost every one of those gaps can be closed while you are alive and able to give instructions. The catch is sequence. Some steps take weeks, not days — moving the deeds is the slow one, so it goes first. And one step, marrying, can quietly cancel a will you have only just made unless you handle it in the right order. Here is that order.

Where the two of you stand right now

Start from the true picture, because the plan depends on it. You own the home; she does not. If nothing changes, on your death the property passes under your will, or — if there is no will — under the intestacy rules, and those rules do not recognise a cohabiting partner. It does not matter that she has lived there for years, contributed to the bills, or is raising your children. Contribution can sometimes ground a separate legal claim, but a claim is a court process with cost, delay and no guaranteed result, and it is the last thing you want to leave her holding.

The other everyday problem lands within days. When the bank is told you have died, your sole accounts are frozen until the estate is dealt with. A joint account normally carries on for the surviving holder, but money in your name alone is locked away exactly when the mortgage, the utilities and the food shop still need paying. If the household runs on your income and your account, that is a real, immediate squeeze, separate from the question of who ends up owning the house.

So there are two jobs. One is ownership: making sure she keeps the roof. The other is liquidity: making sure there is money she can actually reach in the weeks after, without waiting for a grant. The steps below deal with both.

First: the deeds, because they take the longest

Adding your partner to the title is called a transfer of equity, and it is a conveyancing job, so instruct a solicitor or licensed conveyancer straight away and tell them plainly what timescale you are working to. They can prioritise it, but they cannot make the moving parts instant. Two of those parts matter most.

The first is the lender. Where there is a mortgage, you cannot simply add a name to the deeds — the lender has to consent, because you are changing who is liable for the loan. Most lenders will consider it, but they assess affordability, and that takes time. The second is tax. Adding a partner who takes on a share of the mortgage debt can trigger stamp duty if the value of the debt she takes on is above the threshold. On an unmortgaged home given as a gift, there is usually no stamp duty to pay. The current thresholds are set out on the gov.uk stamp duty land tax pages.

There is also a choice about how she is added, and it is the whole point of doing it. If you hold the property as joint tenants, your share passes to her automatically on death, outside the will and without waiting for probate. If you hold as tenants in common, each share passes under the respective will, which reintroduces exactly the delay you are trying to avoid. For a partner you want to keep in the home, joint tenancy is normally the arrangement that does the work.

One honest caveat. Giving away a share of the house now does not usually save inheritance tax if you die soon afterwards, because the value stays counted in your estate, and there is no spouse exemption between unmarried partners. The reason to transfer the deeds is security of the home and speed of transfer, not tax. Keep those motives clear so the conveyancer structures it for the right reason.

Then: make or update your will

The deeds settle the house. The will settles everything else — savings, possessions, any share of the property you did not or could not transfer — and it is the document that names your partner as the person who inherits. Without a valid will, the intestacy rules apply and she receives nothing from the estate, regardless of how long you were together.

A will also lets you handle the situations the deeds cannot. If you have children from an earlier relationship, or you are raising each other's children, you can balance leaving your partner the home against leaving those children a defined share, rather than forcing one against the other. Where a stepchild has grown up in your household, you do not need to have adopted them to leave them something — the mechanics of that are set out in our guide on whether you need to adopt a stepchild to leave them the house. And where you want money to reach a child but be managed for them, a will is where a trust is created.

Use a solicitor for a will made under time pressure and in these circumstances. A homemade will that is wrongly witnessed or ambiguously worded can fail entirely, and there will be no chance to fix it. This is not the moment to save a few pounds on drafting.

Should you marry?

Marriage — or a civil partnership — is the legal shortcut some couples in this position take, and it is worth understanding honestly rather than sentimentally. In a single afternoon it gives your partner inheritance rights if you die without a will, the spouse exemption that lets your whole estate pass to her free of inheritance tax, access to bereavement benefits that unmarried partners are shut out of, and usually a survivor's pension from any workplace scheme. No other single step closes so many gaps at once.

But there is a trap that catches people at the worst time. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, marrying revokes any existing will unless that will was expressly made in contemplation of the marriage. So if you carefully make a will leaving everything to your partner and then marry the following week, the marriage can wipe out the will you just made — and you would be back to the intestacy rules. If you intend to do both, either make the will state that it is made in contemplation of your marriage to her, or make the new will after the ceremony. Do not leave the sequence to chance.

Scotland works differently here: marriage does not revoke an existing will, so the order is less dangerous, though you would still want the will to reflect the marriage. Whichever nation you are in, tell whoever drafts the will that a marriage may follow, so they build it in.

Your pension and its nomination form

Pensions do not usually pass under your will at all. Most modern pensions pay a death benefit at the discretion of the scheme trustees, and they are guided by the nomination — the expression of wish form — you filled in when you joined, which may have been years ago and may name a parent, an ex-partner, or nobody. If your current partner is not named, the scheme is not obliged to pay her, and with a discretionary death benefit that can matter enormously.

So find every pension and update every nomination now, in writing, naming your partner. If you have a choice about whether to draw a pension or leave it untouched given your diagnosis, that decision interacts with tax and with what your partner receives, and it is worth taking properly — we cover the trade-offs in whether to draw or leave a pension after a diagnosis. The nomination form itself, though, is a five-minute job with an outsized effect, and it is the one people most often forget.

The money already inside your life policy

Many term life policies include a terminal illness benefit as standard, and it is easy to overlook at exactly the moment it becomes useful. It pays the sum assured early — while you are still alive — once a doctor confirms your life expectancy is less than twelve months. The policy then ends, so it is the same money paid sooner rather than an extra sum. Claiming early has a quiet advantage in your situation: it lets you see the money land where you intended, and use some of it to clear the immediate pressure while you can still direct things.

Two checks are worth making today. First, read the policy or simply ask the insurer whether a terminal illness benefit applies and how to claim it — some policies exclude it in the final stretch of the term. Second, if the policy is written in trust, confirm the trustees are named, still willing, and know where the paperwork is; a policy in trust pays the trustees directly, without waiting for probate, which is precisely the speed you need. Never assume a payout is guaranteed until the insurer has confirmed the claim, because it still depends on the medical evidence and the policy terms.

A terminal prognosis is a clinical estimate, not a fixed date, and survival after a given diagnosis varies more than people expect. That is one more reason to get the paperwork done now rather than pacing it against a timetable nobody can promise.

Source: NHS England and the National Disease Registration Service, Cancer Survival in England, cancers diagnosed 2018 to 2022.

Once your own affairs are settled, your partner may want to make sure her own protection is in place, so the same gap never opens for whoever depends on her. She can get life insurance quotes and have an FCA-authorised broker review what, if anything, she already holds.

Scotland and Northern Ireland

The urgency and the order are the same everywhere, but the legal detail is not, and two differences are worth naming.

In Scotland, a surviving cohabitant is not left entirely without a route: under the Family Law (Scotland) Act 2006, a partner can apply to the court for a discretionary financial award from the estate where the person died without a will. It must be applied for within a strict time limit, usually six months of the death, and the award is at the court's discretion — it is a safety net, not a substitute for making a will and it does not apply where there is a will. A transfer of the title in Scotland is registered in the Land Register and any tax is Land and Buildings Transaction Tax rather than stamp duty. As noted above, marriage does not revoke an existing Scottish will.

Northern Ireland has its own succession and family provision rules, which differ again from those in England and Wales; the position of an unmarried partner making a claim on the home is set out in our guide to a cohabitant's claim on the house in Northern Ireland. If your home is rented rather than owned, the separate question of whether your partner can stay is a tenancy-succession question, covered in whether an unmarried partner can succeed to a council tenancy. Free, independent help with all of this is available from MoneyHelper and Citizens Advice, and neither will sell you anything. You can also read the wider set of situations in our guide to dependants and unusual family shapes.

Frequently asked questions

Can I add my partner to the deeds now?

Often yes, through a transfer of equity, but where there is a mortgage the lender must consent, and stamp duty can apply if she takes on a share of the debt above the threshold. It takes weeks rather than days, so instruct a conveyancer immediately and tell them plainly what timescale you are working to. Whether she is added as a joint tenant or a tenant in common changes whether your share passes to her automatically, so raise that with them too.

Should we marry?

It is a legal shortcut some couples take, and it closes several gaps at once. Marriage gives inheritance rights on intestacy, the spouse exemption from inheritance tax, access to bereavement benefits and usually a scheme pension. But marriage revokes an existing will in England, Wales and Northern Ireland unless that will was made in contemplation of it, so handle the order carefully. In Scotland, marriage does not revoke a will.

Will my life policy pay out before I die?

Many term policies include a terminal illness benefit that pays the sum assured early once a doctor confirms a life expectancy of under twelve months. It is worth asking the insurer directly rather than assuming, because some policies exclude it near the end of the term. Where the policy is in trust, check the trustees are named and know where the paperwork is, because they receive the money without waiting for probate.