Can I Leave My House to My Children but Let My Partner Live There?

If your will simply says 'I leave my house to my children', your partner has no right to remain living there once you have died and the estate is administered; your children, as the new legal owners, could in principle ask them to leave. If instead your will says 'I leave my house to my partner', your children lose any guarantee of inheriting it, because your partner now owns it outright and can leave it to whoever they choose in their own will, or sell it during their lifetime.

Neither outcome achieves what most people in this situation actually want, which is both things at once: security for a partner during their lifetime, and certainty for children afterwards. That combination needs a trust, because a trust can separate the right to use and benefit from an asset from the right to ultimately own its capital value.

An immediate post-death interest trust, set up within your will, gives your partner (the 'life tenant') the right to live in the property for their lifetime, or until an earlier trigger event you specify such as remarriage or voluntarily moving out permanently, while your children (or others) are named as the ultimate beneficiaries who will receive the property, or its sale proceeds, when your partner's interest ends. Trustees, who could include your partner and one or more independent trustees such as an adult child or a professional, are appointed to hold the legal title and make decisions on behalf of both the current and future beneficiaries.

This structure genuinely protects both sides: your partner cannot be forced out and has a secure legal right to remain, while your children have a guaranteed future interest that cannot be given away or left elsewhere by your partner, because they never own the property outright.

A well-drafted trust of this kind needs to deal with a number of practical questions that a simple will never has to address. Who pays for ongoing repairs, buildings insurance, and, if relevant, a mortgage during your partner's occupation? Can your partner sell the property and buy a smaller one, with the trust continuing over the replacement home? What happens if your partner needs to move into residential care, does the trust end, and is the property then sold to fund care costs or held for your children?

These questions are not minor details; they are frequently where these arrangements go wrong in practice if left unanswered, leading to disputes between a surviving partner and stepchildren years down the line. A solicitor drafting this kind of trust will work through each of these scenarios with you and build the answers into the trust terms.

If you currently own the home as joint tenants with your partner, this arrangement will not work as intended, because your share of the property would pass automatically to your partner on your death by survivorship, regardless of what your will says, leaving nothing for the trust to hold for your children. The joint tenancy would generally need to be severed into a tenancy in common first, so your share becomes a separate asset your will can deal with, as explained in our guide on protecting children from a previous relationship.

On inheritance tax, a life interest trust of this kind for a spouse or civil partner can usually benefit from the normal spouse exemption in a similar way to an outright gift, while for an unmarried partner the position is different and generally more limited, since the spouse exemption does not apply. The rules around these trusts, and how the property is treated for inheritance tax when the life tenant later dies, are detailed and depend on your specific circumstances, so this should always be checked with a solicitor or tax adviser rather than assumed.

If your circumstances are simple, for example you and your partner already jointly own a property as tenants in common and are both happy for it to pass outright to whichever of you survives, or you want to leave the property outright to your children with no ongoing role for a partner, that can generally be achieved with a straightforward will.

If what you actually want is what this guide describes, letting a partner live in the home for life while ultimately protecting it for your children, this needs a trust drafted by a solicitor. It is not something a simple online will can deliver safely, and getting it wrong can leave both your partner and your children worse off than if you had done nothing at all.