Making a Will When Moving in Together

It is one of the most persistent misunderstandings in English law. Many long-term cohabiting couples genuinely believe that after a certain number of years together, or once they have children, they acquire something close to the legal status of a married couple. This is not true. There is no length of time living together that creates automatic inheritance rights, next of kin status, or any of the other protections marriage provides.

This matters immediately, not just eventually. From the day you move in together, if one of you were to die without a will, the other has no automatic claim on the estate at all, regardless of how the relationship is regarded by family and friends, or how many years you have shared a home.

If you die without a will, your estate is distributed under the intestacy rules, which follow a strict order based on marriage, civil partnership and blood relationship. An unmarried partner does not appear anywhere in that order, however long you lived together. Your estate would pass instead to children, parents, siblings or more distant relatives, potentially leaving your partner with nothing, even if you shared a home and built a life together.

This can create a genuinely difficult situation, particularly if the home you shared was owned in your sole name, since your partner could in theory be left needing to make a claim against the estate simply to remain living there, a process that is stressful, uncertain and avoidable with proper planning.

If you are buying a property together, the way it is legally held decides what happens to it when one of you dies, separately from anything a will says. As joint tenants, the property automatically passes to the survivor regardless of what either will states. As tenants in common, each partner owns a defined share, which passes according to their will, or under intestacy if there is no will, meaning it could end up going to someone other than your partner.

For most cohabiting couples buying together, joint tenancy is the simpler and more protective option, since it guarantees the survivor keeps the home. Tenants in common can make sense where you have put in unequal amounts and want that reflected, or where you want your own share to go to children from an earlier relationship, but this needs to be paired with a will that says exactly what you intend.

A will lets you name your partner as a beneficiary directly, giving them a clear, guaranteed entitlement rather than leaving it to chance or to a difficult and expensive claim after your death. It also lets you appoint your partner, or someone else you trust, as executor to deal with your estate, which an unmarried partner has no automatic right to do otherwise.

If you have children, whether together or from previous relationships, a will also lets you balance provision for your partner with provision for your children clearly, rather than leaving everyone to work it out, or fight it out, after you are gone.

There is no legal requirement to have a will just because you move in with someone, but there is a strong practical case for it, precisely because the law does not step in to protect you the way it would for a married couple. Many couples treat setting up a joint bank account or updating their address as part of moving in together; a will deserves the same place on that list.

Making a will together, even a simple one, means you can both be confident that if the worst happened, the other would actually be provided for rather than relying on family goodwill or a stressful legal claim. It takes far less time than the move itself, and it can be done online from £69.