Making a Will in Your 30s

A first home is often the biggest asset most people own, and how you hold it matters. If you buy with a partner as joint tenants, the property automatically passes to the survivor when one of you dies, regardless of what either will says. If you hold it as tenants in common, your share passes according to your will or the intestacy rules, which gives you more control but also more reason to make sure your will actually says what you want.

This is particularly important for unmarried couples buying together, since without a will an unmarried partner has no automatic right to inherit a share held as tenants in common, or indeed anything else in your estate. Getting this right at the point of buying, rather than years later, avoids a nasty surprise for a partner who has helped pay a mortgage for years.

Having a child is the single biggest reason people finally get round to making a will in their 30s. A will lets you appoint a guardian for your children under section 5 of the Children Act 1989, someone you have chosen and trust, rather than leaving that decision to the family court to work out after the fact, drawing on relatives who come forward.

A will also lets you decide how any money left to your children is managed and at what age they receive it outright, commonly 18, 21 or 25, with a trustee looking after it in the meantime. Without a will, children inherit under intestacy at 18 with no flexibility and no guardian appointed, which is rarely what a parent would actually choose.

Many people take out life insurance or mortgage protection cover around the time they buy a home, specifically so a partner or family is not left struggling with repayments. This kind of policy usually pays out to whoever is named on the policy or held in trust for, rather than through your will, so it is worth checking the nomination matches who you actually want to benefit.

If the policy is not written in trust, the payout can form part of your estate and be subject to inheritance tax and delays through probate, whereas a policy correctly written in trust usually reaches your family faster and outside of that process. This is a detail worth checking with whoever arranged the policy, alongside making sure your will itself is up to date.

If you marry or enter a civil partnership during your 30s, be aware that this generally revokes any earlier will automatically, unless that will was specifically made in contemplation of the marriage and says so. This catches people out regularly: they made a sensible will years earlier, married, and unknowingly reverted to intestacy without realising their will no longer applied.

Moving in with a partner without marrying does not carry the same legal weight, however committed the relationship feels, and an unmarried partner still has no automatic right to inherit. Either way, a wedding, a house purchase or a new baby is a natural moment to make or refresh a will rather than assume an old one still covers your situation.

Your 30s often bring several of these changes in quick succession, so a will made once at the start of the decade may need revisiting more than once before the decade is out. This does not need to be a major undertaking; updating a will to reflect a new child, a new home or a marriage is usually quick and inexpensive, particularly with an online will service.

The value lies in making sure the people who matter most to you, whether a spouse, partner or young children, are protected in the way you actually intend, rather than relying on rules designed for a different set of circumstances. At £69, it is a small cost for the reassurance of knowing your family is looked after.