Keeping My Ex Away From the Money, Not the Children

If your ex has parental responsibility, you cannot stop them raising the children when you die. That decision belongs to the surviving parent and, if it is ever disputed, to a court. But the money is a separate question, and it is one you can control. You do not stop your ex getting the life insurance money you leave for the children by wishing it away — you do it by writing the policy in trust and naming the people you choose to manage it.

This is the distinction that gets lost at the worst possible moment. People hear that the other parent will "get everything" and assume that includes the payout from a life policy. It does not have to. A policy written in trust does not fall into your estate and is not handed to whoever is looking after the children. It is paid to the trustees you named, and they decide how it is applied for the children — school shoes now, rent at eighteen, a deposit at twenty-five — without your ex controlling the fund.

So the honest answer comes in two halves. You almost certainly cannot keep your ex away from the children. You can, with very little effort and nobody's permission, keep them away from the money.

The two questions are separate, and keeping them apart is the whole trick

There are two things people muddle together here, and untangling them is what makes the arrangement work. The first is who cares for the children. The second is who controls the money you leave for them. They are governed by completely different parts of the law, and the answer to one does not bind the other.

Care is a question of parental responsibility. In England and Wales, if the other parent holds parental responsibility — which a father named on the birth certificate since December 2003 does, and which a mother always has — they can care for the children from the day you die, even if the children have lived with you full time. A guardian you name in your will does not displace a surviving parent who holds parental responsibility. That is the part you cannot engineer away, and trying to is usually a mistake.

Money is a question of trust law and of how your life policy is written. It has nothing to do with who has the children under their roof. You can hand day-to-day care to the other parent and, in the same breath, put every penny of the payout under the control of people who are not the other parent. The law lets you do both at once precisely because it treats them as different problems.

What writing a policy "in trust" actually does

Left to itself, a life insurance payout is paid into your estate. It then waits for probate and is distributed according to your will, or — if you have not made one — according to the intestacy rules. That is slow, it is public, and it hands the money to whoever is administering your affairs.

Writing the policy in trust changes all of that at the outset. You place the policy into a trust when you take it out. You name the trustees, and you name the beneficiaries — here, your children. When you die, the insurer pays the trustees directly, usually without waiting for a grant of probate, and the money never enters your estate at all. It is ring-fenced for the children from the first moment.

The consequence for your situation is the one that matters. The other parent, even holding full parental responsibility, is not a trustee unless you choose to make them one. They do not receive the money, they cannot demand it, and they cannot spend it. It sits with the trustees you picked, to be applied for the children as those trustees see fit. Most insurers offer a trust form alongside the policy at no extra cost, which is why our guidance on paying the children rather than the ex after a divorce treats it as the default rather than an add-on.

Choosing your trustees

The trustees are the heart of this, so choose them with more care than you would give almost any other decision on the policy. Appoint at least two, so that no single person is ever the only one holding the money, and so the trust can carry on if one of them dies or steps down. Name a replacement or two while you are at it.

Pick people who will actually act, who get on with each other, and who can be businesslike with the other parent rather than drawn into old arguments. In practice that is often your own mother or father, a sibling, or a close friend — sometimes with a professional trustee alongside where the sum is large or the family is fractious. What every trustee shares is a legal duty to act in the beneficiaries' interests, meaning your children's, and not their own.

Then leave a letter of wishes. It is not part of the trust and it does not bind the trustees, but it tells them, in your own words, what you wanted the money to do: keep the children in their school, cover the activities you were paying for, help with a first car or a deposit. Trustees given a clear letter make better decisions and argue less. The same trustee question comes up whenever someone is marrying later in life with children from a previous relationship, and the answer is the same — the right two or three people matter more than any clause in the deed.

Treat the choice as something to revisit, not to fix once and forget. Trustees fall out, move away, or fall ill; a friend who was ideal when your children were toddlers may be the wrong person a decade later. Relationships with the other parent change too, sometimes for the better. Read the letter of wishes and the list of trustees again every few years, and after any major change — a house move, a new relationship on either side, a trustee's own bereavement — and update them while it is easy, rather than leaving your children with a trust run by the wrong people.

How it works alongside the other parent's day-to-day authority

A trust that starves the household the children live in is a bad trust, and good trustees know it. The other parent will be raising the children and meeting the ordinary costs of doing so, and they can reasonably approach the trustees to have those costs met — the uniforms, the school trip, the new bed. Sensible trustees will pay for the children's genuine needs and keep a record of what they paid and why.

The difference is control, not generosity. Trustees can reimburse the resident parent for money spent on the children, or pay a bill directly, while the capital stays under their management rather than being handed over as a lump for someone else to spend. That protects the children from the fund being absorbed into a general household, or into a new relationship, or simply spent on things that were never for them. It is not about distrusting the other parent as a person. It is about making sure money you left for your children reaches your children.

Some people ask whether they should simply name the other parent as a trustee, to avoid the appearance of shutting them out. You can, and where the separation is amicable it sometimes works. But remember what you are doing: a trustee has their hand on the money. Naming your ex as a trustee gives them exactly the control you may be trying to keep in careful hands. Most people in a strained co-parenting relationship appoint trustees from their own side, brief those trustees to deal fairly and promptly with the other parent, and leave it there.

Why family income benefit often suits separated parents

The shape of the cover matters as much as the trust around it. A single large lump sum handed to trustees when a child is small has to sit invested for years, and to a teenager or a co-parent it can start to look like a windfall to be argued over. A regular monthly income is easier to administer, harder to fritter, and closer to what you were actually providing — a contribution every month rather than a one-off cheque.

That is what family income benefit does. Rather than paying one lump on death, it pays a set income for the remainder of a chosen term — typically until the youngest child finishes full-time education. Written in trust, that income stream is controlled by your trustees and applied for the children month by month. It fits a separated family well because it mirrors maintenance: a steady flow, for as long as the children actually need it, rather than a pot that lands all at once. You can pair it with a smaller lump sum if there is a specific one-off cost, such as clearing a mortgage, but the income does the day-to-day work.

If you want to see what this looks like as a real arrangement, you can get life insurance quotes and ask an FCA-authorised broker to set the policy up in trust from the start, rather than trying to bolt a trust on afterwards.

What a trust cannot do

It is worth being clear about the limits, because a trust oversold is a trust that disappoints. A trust deals only with money. It cannot decide who the children live with, it cannot remove the other parent's parental responsibility, and it cannot override a court that is looking at the children's welfare. If there is ever a genuine dispute about the children's upbringing, that is decided on what is best for them under the Children Act 1989 in England and Wales, and no trust wording changes it.

Nor can a trust be used as a weapon. Trustees owe their duties to the children, not to your feelings about your ex, and a court can intervene if trustees behave unreasonably. Build a trust designed to punish the other parent — trustees chosen for their hostility, terms written to make the resident household's life difficult — and the people who suffer are the children, not the ex. The arrangement works because it is calm: you keep control of the money and leave the parenting to the parent. If you and your former partner never married, your own position on the estate is a different matter again, set out in our piece on whether having children together gives an unmarried partner any claim.

One practical reassurance while you are arranging this: a past or present health condition affects your ability to get cover far less than most people fear, so it is rarely a reason to put the decision off — as we explain for people arranging life cover when they have multiple sclerosis. Independent, free guidance on wills and trusts is available from MoneyHelper, which is government-backed and sells nothing.

Scotland and Northern Ireland

The core idea — that money held in trust is controlled by the trustees you name, not by the other parent — holds across the United Kingdom. What changes is some of the surrounding law.

In Scotland, a young person reaches full legal capacity at sixteen rather than eighteen, so a simple trust that pays out at the age of majority pays out earlier there; families who want to hold money for longer use a discretionary trust to do it. Parental responsibilities and rights in Scotland come under the Children (Scotland) Act 1995 rather than the Children Act 1989. In Northern Ireland the framework broadly follows England and Wales but under its own legislation, chiefly the Children (Northern Ireland) Order 1995. None of these differences alter the central point: you cannot generally keep your ex from raising the children, and you can keep them from controlling the money. This article sits within our wider guide to dependants and unusual family shapes, which covers the neighbouring situations in more detail.

Frequently asked questions

Can I stop my ex getting the life insurance meant for the children?

You can control who holds it. A policy written in trust names your trustees, and they decide how the money is applied for the children. The other parent has no claim on the trust fund itself, though they may reasonably ask the trustees to meet costs for the children, which good trustees will do while keeping the capital under their own control.

Does that affect who the children live with?

No. A trust deals only with money. If the other parent has parental responsibility, they can care for the children on your death, and a court would decide any dispute about the children on their welfare rather than on the trust. Keeping the two questions separate — care in one place, money in another — is exactly what makes the arrangement workable.

Who should I appoint as trustees?

At least two people who will actually act, who get on with each other, and who can be businesslike with the other parent — often your own parent, a sibling or a close friend, sometimes with a professional alongside where the sum is large. Name a replacement in case one cannot serve, and leave a letter of wishes explaining what you want the money used for.