Do You Need a Will If You Are Married With No Children?

If you are married with no children and wondering whether you actually need a will, here is the part most pages skip: you might not, today. Under the intestacy rules of England and Wales, a person who dies married or in a civil partnership with no children leaves their whole estate to their surviving spouse or civil partner. So if your single wish is that your husband or wife inherits everything, the law may already do exactly that, with no signature from you.

That is the honest starting point, and it is why plenty of childless couples keep putting the job off. But "the default happens to match my wishes right now" is a fragile thing to build a plan on. Intestacy is a blunt instrument that hands out the estate the state has decided on, not the one you would design — and four ordinary life events flip the outcome overnight. One of them is the baby you have not had yet.

So the useful version of the question — do I need a will if we are married, own most things jointly, and my spouse inherits anyway — is this: for now, perhaps not. But on the day one of those four events happens, the default stops matching your wishes, and it does so silently, with no letter to warn you the ground has moved.

The short answer: for now, intestacy may already do it

Since the rules changed in October 2014, the position for a childless married couple in England and Wales has been simple. Where someone dies without a will and leaves a spouse or civil partner but no children, the survivor takes the entire estate. There is no share carved off for the deceased's parents or siblings, and no life interest to unpick. The whole lot passes to the widow or widower.

That is why the blunt answer to "does my spouse inherit everything if I die" is, in this specific situation, usually yes. It is also why the honest advice is not to frighten you into a will you do not yet need, but to be clear about how narrow the situation is. The rule holds only while three things remain true: you are legally married or in a civil partnership, you have no children, and nothing in your estate is governed by something other than the intestacy rules. Change any one of those and the picture moves.

The four things that break the default overnight

These are the events that turn "my spouse gets everything anyway" from true into false. None of them announces itself as a legal change, which is exactly why they catch people out.

A baby

The moment you have a child, your spouse stops inheriting everything. Under intestacy, where there are children the surviving spouse takes the personal possessions, a fixed statutory legacy, and half of whatever is left; the children take the other half. That children's share does not wait until they are adults sensibly ready for it — it is held on trust and handed over when they turn eighteen, an age we look at squarely in why children inherit at eighteen under intestacy, and nothing before.

The statutory legacy is the amount the spouse receives before the estate is split.

Source: gov.uk, Intestacy — who inherits if someone dies without a will. The statutory legacy in England and Wales is £322,000, in force from 26 July 2023.

On a modest estate that figure may absorb almost everything, so in practice a surviving spouse with young children can still be left comfortable. But on a larger estate, or where the family home pushes the numbers up, a real slice now belongs to the children rather than to your partner — and it is locked to age eighteen. Having a child also means your will suddenly has a second job it never had before: naming who raises them, and covering the frightening gap in the first days, which we set out in who has your child before the guardian takes over.

A house owned as tenants in common

How you own your home decides whether it even passes under intestacy. Most couples own as joint tenants, where the whole property passes automatically to the survivor by survivorship, outside the will and outside the intestacy rules. But if you own as tenants in common — common where a deposit was unequal, or where a couple deliberately split ownership — each of you owns a distinct share, and your share falls into your estate on death. It then passes under your will, or, if you have none, under intestacy. Without a will, that share may not go where you assumed, and in the wrong circumstances it can force a sale of the home. If you both die together, the question of who ends up owning the house is answered by rules you never chose.

A share in a business

If you own part of a company, the intestacy rules are not the last word on your shares. The company's articles of association and any shareholders' agreement come first, and they frequently contain pre-emption rights requiring your shares to be offered to the other shareholders, or provisions letting the directors refuse to register your spouse as a member. Your husband or wife may end up entitled only to the value of the shares, not to a seat at the table — and sometimes not even to the value, if the funding to buy them out was never arranged. Intestacy cannot fix any of that, because those documents override it.

The second death

This is the one nobody sees coming, because it happens after you are gone. Whatever your spouse inherits from you becomes wholly theirs. If they later remarry, that new marriage revokes any will they had made, and on their own death the estate can pass to their new spouse and, in time, to that side of the family. Your own parents, siblings, nieces and nephews can end up with nothing — not because anyone intended it, but because the money followed the survivor's life rather than yours. Mirror wills with substitute beneficiaries, or a trust, are how childless couples keep a measure of control over where things go after both of you have died. Intestacy offers no such control at all.

"But we own everything jointly"

Joint ownership is the reason many couples feel a will is unnecessary, and it does genuinely carry a lot of weight. A jointly held bank account and a home owned as joint tenants both pass to the survivor automatically, without probate and without reference to intestacy. If that were truly the whole estate, the case for a will would be weaker.

It rarely is the whole estate, though. Pensions, sole bank accounts, a car, premium bonds, a business interest, an inheritance you receive yourself — these are usually in one name, and none of them passes by survivorship. Someone still has to be appointed to deal with them, and with no will there is no executor: a relative must apply to become administrator first, which is slower and clumsier than it needs to be.

There is a sharper problem too. Survivorship only helps if one of you outlives the other. If you die together — a car accident, say — the law applies the commorientes rule and treats the elder as having died first, which can send assets in a direction neither of you would have chosen. Joint ownership answers the common case and stays silent on the worst one. A will covers both.

If you are not married, the picture is completely different

Everything above assumes you are legally married or in a civil partnership. If you are living together without either, the intestacy rules treat you as strangers. There is no such thing as common-law marriage in the law of England and Wales, however many years you have shared a home and a mortgage. A surviving cohabiting partner inherits nothing under intestacy, and to receive anything at all would have to bring a court claim under the family-provision legislation — slow, expensive and uncertain, at the worst possible moment. We spell this out for couples without children in cohabiting without children and the bereavement help you still will not get, and for those who do have children together in whether having children together gives an unmarried partner any rights.

For an unmarried couple, then, the answer inverts. Where a married couple may not urgently need a will, an unmarried one almost always does, because the default leaves the survivor with nothing rather than everything.

What a will does that intestacy cannot

Even while the default happens to suit you, a will earns its place by doing things the intestacy rules simply cannot. It names an executor you trust, so nobody has to apply for the right to act. It lets you provide for people intestacy ignores entirely — an unmarried partner, a stepchild, a sibling, a charity. It lets you build in the substitutes and trusts that answer the second-death problem. And once a child arrives, it is where you appoint a guardian.

There is one thing neither a will nor the intestacy rules can do: create money that was not there. Both only share out what exists. If your spouse would lose your income, or face a mortgage on a home you owned jointly, the estate rules do nothing to plug that gap — a house passing to your partner in full is still a house with a loan on it. That gap is what life cover exists to fill, and for a couple clearing a mortgage or replacing an income it is usually level term cover sized to the debt and the years it has left to run. If you want to see what that would look like against your own figures, you can get life insurance quotes and have an FCA-authorised broker price it for you. Our guide to wills, guardianship and children sets out the rest of these decisions together.

Scotland and Northern Ireland

The "spouse inherits everything" rule is a feature of England and Wales, and it does not travel unchanged across the UK.

In Scotland, there is no equivalent rule handing the whole estate to a childless survivor automatically. Scots law divides an intestate estate into prior rights, legal rights and the free estate, and the surviving spouse's entitlement is capped at set limits before other relatives — parents and siblings — can share in what is left. The upshot is the opposite of England and Wales: a Scottish spouse with no children is often more likely to need a will to inherit everything, not less, because the default may stop short of the full estate.

In Northern Ireland the rules are closer to England and Wales in shape, but with an important catch. Where someone dies with a spouse but no children, and leaves surviving parents or siblings, the spouse does not necessarily take the whole estate — it can be shared with them. So the comfortable assumption that "my spouse gets everything" is even less safe in Northern Ireland than in England and Wales. Wherever you live in the UK, the safe course is the same: check what your own default actually is, rather than trusting a rule you half-remember.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a will if I am married with no children?

Under the England and Wales intestacy rules a spouse or civil partner inherits the whole estate where there are no children, so the outcome may already match your wishes. A will still names your executor so nobody has to apply for the right to act, and it protects you the moment your circumstances change — which they tend to do without warning.

What changes the answer?

Four things. A baby, because children then take a share above the statutory legacy. Buying property as tenants in common, where your share passes under your will rather than to the survivor automatically. Owning a business share governed by the company's articles. And the second death, when whatever your spouse inherits passes down their family line rather than yours.

Does my partner get everything if we are not married?

No. Cohabiting partners inherit nothing under the intestacy rules in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, however long you have lived together, because there is no common-law marriage in law. A surviving partner would have to bring a court claim, which is slow, costly and uncertain. A will avoids all of it.