Does My Partner Get My House if I Die?

If you die without a will, the intestacy rules give a surviving spouse or civil partner priority, but the exact outcome depends on the size of the estate and whether you have children. Where there are children, the spouse receives the personal belongings, a statutory legacy fixed by law, and only half of anything remaining above that, with the rest going to the children rather than the spouse outright. This can mean a surviving spouse has to share the value of the family home with children even though they are still living in it.

A will avoids this uncertainty by letting you leave the property, or your share of it, directly to your spouse, or by using a trust structure that lets them stay in the home while ultimately preserving something for children from an earlier relationship.

Unmarried partners, however long they have lived together, have no automatic right to inherit anything under the intestacy rules. This is a common and serious misunderstanding, sometimes described as a belief in 'common law marriage', which has no legal basis in England and Wales. If you die without a will and are not married to your partner, your estate passes to your relatives in a fixed order, and your partner can be left with nothing, even if they have lived in the property with you for decades.

The only way to guarantee your unmarried partner inherits the home, or a share of it, is to make a will that says so clearly.

If you own the home jointly as beneficial joint tenants, the right of survivorship means your share passes automatically to the surviving joint owner the moment you die, regardless of what your will says. This applies to many married couples and some unmarried couples, and it means the will is not actually what determines who gets the house in that situation.

If you own the property as tenants in common, you each hold a defined share, and your share does not pass automatically. Instead it passes under your will, or under the intestacy rules if you have no will. It is worth checking the register at HM Land Registry, or your title deeds, to find out which applies to you, because many people are not sure.

Without a will, everything defaults to the intestacy rules and, where relevant, to however the property happens to be registered. For unmarried couples this combination is often the worst outcome, since the survivor may have no right to the home and no right to anything else in the estate either.

For married couples it is a better position but still not guaranteed to match what either of you would actually want, particularly around how much a surviving spouse keeps outright versus what passes to children.

A will lets you say exactly what happens to your home: leave it outright to your partner, leave a life interest so they can live there for their lifetime with the capital passing to children afterwards, or leave your share of a jointly owned property to whoever you choose if it is held as tenants in common.

My Posh Will is an online guided will service for England and Wales that lets you set out exactly what happens to your property and to your partner. A single will costs £69 and mirror wills for couples cost £89, both one-off payments with lifetime access, and most people complete the process in around ten minutes, with clear instructions on signing and witnessing.