Making a Will in Your 20s

In your 20s you are often building the first version of your adult life: a job, a rented flat, a small amount of savings, perhaps a car bought outright or on finance. None of this feels like an 'estate' in the way people picture inheritance tax and country houses, but everything you own and everything owed to you forms your estate when you die, however modest it is.

What tends to shift most in this decade is your relationships. Many people move in with a partner, get engaged, or start building a life together without marrying or entering a civil partnership straight away. That distinction matters far more than most people realise, because English and Welsh law does not treat long-term unmarried partners the same way it treats spouses.

If you die without a will, your estate is distributed under the intestacy rules, which set out a fixed order of who inherits: spouse or civil partner first, then children, then parents, then siblings, and so on. An unmarried partner, however long you have lived together and however committed the relationship, is not on that list at all. They would have no automatic right to your savings, your possessions, or a jointly rented home in your name.

This catches a lot of people in their 20s by surprise, because moving in with a partner feels like a natural, low-key step rather than a legal turning point. A will lets you name your partner directly, so they are provided for in the way you would actually want, rather than being left to argue a legal claim after the fact.

One thing that often worries people in their 20s is what happens to student loan debt when they die. The answer is straightforward: UK student loans are written off on death and are not passed on to family or taken from your estate. Other debts, such as credit cards, overdrafts or a car loan, are usually settled from your estate before anything is distributed to beneficiaries, but they are not something your family becomes personally liable for simply by being related to you.

Knowing this distinction helps put your mind at ease about debt, and shifts the focus back to what you do own and who you want it to go to, which is really the more important question a will answers.

If your employer offers a workplace pension, or you have taken out life insurance through work or privately, these usually pass to whoever you have named on an 'expression of wish' or nomination form, held by the pension scheme or insurer, not through your will. Many people fill this in once when they join a scheme and never think about it again.

It is worth checking who is currently named, particularly if your relationships have changed since you joined a pension scheme or took out cover. A will and up-to-date pension nominations work together, covering different parts of what you leave behind, and both are worth getting right while it is quick to do.

A will made in your 20s does not need to be complicated. For most people at this stage it simply names an executor, sets out who should inherit your estate, perhaps says something about who should have a treasured possession, and can include guardianship wishes if you have started a family early. It is quick to put together and easy to update as your circumstances change.

The real value is removing uncertainty for the people you care about at an already difficult time, and making sure a partner, sibling or close friend is provided for rather than overlooked by a set of rules that were not written with your relationships in mind. At £69, making a will now is a small, sensible step rather than something to keep putting off.