The Clause That Saves a Will From Your Own Wedding

A will you made before your wedding can survive the wedding — but only if it was written to. The default rule in England, Wales and Northern Ireland is blunt: getting married revokes your existing will, cancelling it as completely as if you had torn it up. The exception that rescues it is narrow, and it lives in section 18 of the Wills Act 1837. To rely on it, your will has to have been made in contemplation of marriage to a named person, with a stated intention that the marriage should not revoke it.

This catches people who did everything right in the wrong order. You make a careful will. Then, months or years later, you marry. You never think about the two events together, because why on earth would getting married cancel a will? But it does, silently, on the day of the ceremony, and nobody writes to tell you. If the wording is not exactly right, the will is gone, and the intestacy rules — not your wishes — decide who inherits from you.

So the real question is not "does my will survive my wedding". It is "does my will contain the specific clause that lets it survive". A general line about marrying one day does not do it. This page sets out what the clause must actually say, why so many wills that mention a wedding still fail the test, what happens if yours does not have it, and where Scotland parts company with the rest of the UK.

What section 18 of the Wills Act 1837 actually does

The starting rule is set out in section 18 of the Wills Act 1837: a person's will is revoked by their marriage. It is one of the oldest surviving rules in English succession law, and its logic is that marriage changes your closest relationships so fundamentally that an earlier will can no longer be assumed to reflect what you want. Rather than guess, the law wipes the slate and, unless you make a new will, hands the estate to the intestacy rules.

The same applies to civil partnerships. Forming a civil partnership revokes an earlier will exactly as a marriage does, under provisions added to the Wills Act when civil partnerships were introduced. So whichever route a couple takes to formalise their relationship, the effect on a pre-existing will is identical.

Northern Ireland follows the same principle under its own legislation, which is why the answer covers England, Wales and Northern Ireland together. The point that trips people is how quiet the revocation is. There is no notice, no form, no acknowledgement. The will is valid the day before the wedding and void the day after, and most people only discover it when it is far too late to do anything. We set out the mechanics of that in more detail in our guide to how marriage revokes your will unless it says otherwise. You can read the section itself on legislation.gov.uk.

The exception, and the two things it requires

The saving provision is in the same section, and it is deliberately narrow. A will made in expectation of marriage is not revoked by that marriage — but only if two conditions are both met, and both must appear from the will itself.

A named person. The will has to show that, when it was made, you were expecting to marry a particular person. Not marriage in the abstract, not a future spouse whoever they turn out to be, but a named individual. The law is protecting a will made in genuine anticipation of a specific wedding, not a will hedging against the possibility of marrying someone one day.

A stated intention that the marriage should not revoke it. The will also has to show that you intended it to survive the marriage. It is not enough to mention that a wedding is coming; the will must make clear that you want it to keep working afterwards, rather than be swept away by the ceremony.

Both requirements have to be visible on the face of the document. A court reads the will, not your memory or your intentions as you now describe them. If the two things are not expressed in the wording, the exception is unavailable, however obvious your actual wishes were. This is the heart of the matter, and it is where careful drafting and careless drafting separate.

Why a generic clause fails the test

The reason so many wills that gesture at a wedding still get revoked is that they satisfy one requirement and not the other, or state neither with the precision the section demands.

Consider a will that opens, "I make this will in contemplation of my forthcoming marriage." It sounds like the right words. It is not, because it names nobody and says nothing about the will surviving. A court cannot tell from it which marriage was meant, and cannot tell that you wanted the will to outlast it. On that wording, the marriage revokes the will.

Now consider a will that names your partner in a gift — "to my fiancée Sarah Bell" — but says nothing about the effect of the marriage. That is closer, because it identifies a person, but it still does not state the intention that the marriage should not revoke the will. The safest clauses do both explicitly: they name the intended spouse in full and state, in terms, that the will is made in expectation of that marriage and is not to be revoked by it. Anything less leaves an argument, and an argument after a death is exactly what a will is supposed to prevent.

This is why "I mentioned the wedding in my will" and "my will survives the wedding" are not the same statement. Mentioning is not enough. The section asks for a named person and a clear intent, together, and a will that supplies only a fragment of that is treated the same as a will that says nothing at all.

Saving part of a will rather than all of it

There is a second, less-known version of the exception that operates gift by gift rather than on the whole will. Where a will shows that a particular gift was made in expectation of marriage to a named person, and that you intended that gift to survive the marriage, that gift can stand even though the marriage would otherwise have revoked the will.

The rest of the will then generally takes effect alongside it, unless the wording shows you intended the marriage to revoke those other parts. In practice this is a rescue for a specific bequest — a home, a business share, a sum for a particular person — drafted with the wedding in mind, inside a document that was otherwise not.

It is useful to know this exists, but it is not something to rely on by accident. If your intention is that your whole will should carry through your marriage, the whole-will clause is the clean way to achieve it. The gift-level provision is better understood as a safety net than as a plan, and it is one more reason to have the will reviewed rather than to hope a stray phrase does the work.

Scotland is different, and that difference matters

None of this applies in Scotland. Marriage does not revoke a will under Scots law, so a Scottish will made before the wedding remains valid without any contemplation-of-marriage clause, and none is needed. If you made your will in Scotland, the ceremony does not touch it.

That is not the end of the Scottish picture, though, and it would be misleading to leave it there. A will that predates a marriage will not reflect a new spouse unless you update it, so the spouse may be left out of the substantive gifts even though the document survives. And Scotland has legal rights, which give a surviving spouse and children a fixed entitlement to a share of the deceased's moveable estate — broadly, everything other than land and buildings — regardless of what the will says. A Scottish spouse who is not provided for in an old will can claim those legal rights against the moveable estate. So a Scottish will surviving the wedding is genuine good news, but it is still worth revisiting after marriage so that it actually says what you now want.

What happens if the will was revoked: intestacy

When a marriage quietly revokes a will and no new one is made, the estate passes under the intestacy rules, and their outcome is frequently not what the person would have chosen. In England and Wales, where there is a surviving spouse and children, the spouse receives the personal possessions, a fixed statutory legacy, and half of whatever remains; the children take the other half between them.

Source: gov.uk, Inheritance — if there is no will. The statutory legacy for a surviving spouse where there are also children is the first £322,000 of the estate, set with effect from 26 July 2023. The equivalent figures in Northern Ireland and the arrangements in Scotland differ.

Two situations turn this from tidy to painful. The first is a second marriage with children from a first relationship: a revoked will can hand a large slice to a new spouse and cut across everything a parent intended for their own children, a tension that surfaces whenever a couple own a home together and there are children from before. The second is a couple who lived together and bought together before marrying — the interval where your share of a jointly bought home can go somewhere you never intended is precisely the interval a revoked will exposes.

There is a further, easily missed casualty. A will that appoints a guardian for your children is revoked along with everything else, so a marriage can silently remove the guardian you carefully chose. If children are in the picture, this alone is reason enough to review the will, and it is worth understanding how a change in your children's arrangements affects the guardian clause in the will that names them.

The safer approach, and the gap cover fills

There are two sound responses to all of this, and they work best together.

The first is simply to make a fresh will after the wedding. A contemplation-of-marriage clause is valuable when a wedding is approaching and you want the will you have to carry through it, but the belt-and-braces answer once you are married is a new will that reflects your married life as it now is. That also lets you deal with everything a wedding changes at once, alongside the practical admin people do remember — such as adding a spouse to the mortgage and who then owes the whole loan — and the will, so easily forgotten, sits naturally on that list.

The second is to recognise what a will cannot control on its own. A life policy written in trust does not form part of your estate and does not pass under your will, so it is untouched by whether the wedding revoked the will and untouched by the intestacy rules. It pays the person named in the trust, directly and usually without waiting for probate. That makes it the reliable way to get money to a partner or children at the moment it is needed, whatever state the will is in. Level term cover is a common shape for couples around a wedding and a mortgage, sized to the years the household depends on both incomes.

What an insurer would offer always depends on underwriting, and nothing here is a recommendation about a particular policy. If you want to see what covering your situation would involve, you can get life insurance quotes from an FCA-authorised broker. The wider set of moments that quietly change who depends on you — marriage among them — is gathered in our guide to life events that change who depends on you.

Frequently asked questions

Does a will made before a wedding still work afterwards?

Only if it was expressed to be made in expectation of marriage to a particular named person, under section 18 of the Wills Act 1837. Without that, marriage revokes it in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and the intestacy rules decide who inherits from you instead. In Scotland the position is different, because marriage does not revoke a will there at all.

What exactly does the clause have to say?

It must identify the intended spouse by name and show that the will is made in expectation of that marriage, with the intention that the marriage should not revoke it. A general statement about a forthcoming wedding, or about marriage in the abstract, does not satisfy the test. Both the named person and the stated intention have to appear from the will itself.

Does this apply in Scotland?

No. Marriage does not revoke a will in Scotland, so no contemplation clause is needed there. A Scottish will made before the wedding remains valid, though it will not reflect a new spouse unless it is updated, and legal rights still give a surviving spouse and children a claim on the moveable estate regardless of what the will says.