Making a Will With Children From a Previous Relationship

If you leave your entire estate to your current spouse or partner outright, assuming they will 'do the right thing' and eventually pass assets on to your children from a previous relationship, there is no legal obligation on them to do so. They can make or change their own will at any time after your death, remarry, have more children, or simply decide differently, and your children from your earlier relationship could end up with nothing. This is often called sideways disinheritance, and it is one of the most common regrets in blended family estate planning.

This does not mean you cannot provide generously for a current partner. It means the way you structure that provision matters a great deal if you also want to guarantee something for your own children, and an outright gift is rarely the right tool for both goals at once.

The simplest option is to leave direct, specific gifts to your children now, such as a fixed sum or a percentage share of your estate, with the remainder going to your partner. This guarantees your children receive something regardless of what your partner does later, but it may reduce what is immediately available to support your partner, particularly if a large part of your estate is tied up in a family home.

A more structured option is a trust that gives your partner the right to live in the family home or receive income from your estate during their lifetime, while ultimately preserving the capital for your children when your partner dies. This is usually called a life interest trust, and it is covered in detail in our guide on protecting children from a previous relationship, because it typically requires a solicitor to set up correctly.

Under the Wills Act 1837, marriage or civil partnership automatically revokes an earlier will, unless that will was expressly made in contemplation of the marriage. This catches a lot of people out in blended families: if you made a will years ago naming your children as beneficiaries, then later marry a new partner, your earlier will is void, and without a new one your estate would be distributed under the intestacy rules, which favour a surviving spouse over children in ways you may not intend.

If you are planning to marry or have recently married, you need either a new will or a will made specifically in contemplation of that marriage, naming the intended spouse, to make sure your existing wishes for your children are not accidentally wiped out. This is covered further in our guide on making a will after a second marriage.

Many wills include a survivorship clause, often requiring a beneficiary to survive the deceased by 28 days before inheriting, to avoid the estate being distributed twice in quick succession if a couple die close together. In a blended family this needs particular care: if you and your partner both die within days of each other, a badly drafted set of mirror wills could result in your estate passing entirely to your partner's side of the family rather than your own children, or vice versa, depending on the order of deaths and how each will is worded.

Mirror wills for a blended couple should be checked to make sure they achieve what both partners actually want if both die close together, not just in the more common scenario where one survives the other by years. This is exactly the kind of interaction that is easy to overlook and worth a second pair of eyes on.

If your plan is to leave specific, clearly named gifts to your children and the remainder to your partner, or vice versa, without needing to control what happens after your partner also dies, a well-drafted online will can generally achieve this cleanly.

If you want to guarantee your children ultimately inherit specific assets, such as the family home, while still providing for your partner during their lifetime, that requires a trust structure and should be drafted by a solicitor. The same applies if there is a meaningful risk of a dispute or a 1975 Act claim from either side of the family.