Wills when you have no family

The intestacy rules apply a strict order: spouse or civil partner, then children, then parents, then siblings, then more distant relatives such as aunts, uncles and cousins, working outward through the family tree. If you have no spouse, no children and no living parents or siblings, the search extends to increasingly distant blood relatives, some of whom you may never have met.

If genuinely no qualifying relative can be traced at all, your estate passes to the Crown under the legal principle known as bona vacantia (Latin for 'ownerless goods'), administered by the Government Legal Department. This outcome is rare, but it illustrates just how far the rules will search through blood relatives before your wishes, or lack of them, come into it at all.

If you have a long-term partner but are not married or in a civil partnership, they have no automatic right to inherit anything from you under the intestacy rules, regardless of how long you lived together or how interdependent your finances were. This often comes as a genuine shock to unmarried couples who assume 'common law marriage' gives some automatic protection; it does not exist in English and Welsh law.

If you want your partner to inherit, or to be able to stay in a home you own together, a will is not optional, it is the only way to secure that outcome. See our guide on cohabiting couples' wills for more detail if this applies to you.

With no close family to provide for, many people choose to divide their estate between friends, godchildren, more distant relatives they do want to benefit, and causes or charities they care about. There is no rule requiring you to leave anything to blood relatives at all; English and Welsh law gives you very wide freedom to choose your own beneficiaries.

It is worth being specific rather than vague, naming individuals and charities clearly, including a charity's registered name and number, so your executor has no difficulty identifying exactly who should receive what. See our guide on leaving money to charity for the detail on this.

Many wills default to a spouse or adult child as executor, but without an obvious family candidate you will need to think more carefully about who to appoint. A close friend, a professional such as a solicitor, or a trusted younger relative are all valid choices, provided they are willing and capable of handling the administrative work involved.

If you are unsure anyone in your life is well placed to act, a professional executor, typically a solicitor or a bank's trust service, can be appointed for a fee taken from the estate. This removes the burden from friends or family and ensures someone experienced handles the process, though it does cost more than a lay executor acting for free.

If you are leaving your estate to friends, a partner or charities rather than blood relatives, and you have relatives who might have expected to inherit, it is worth being aware that a very limited category of people, broadly those who were financially dependent on you, could potentially bring a claim under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975. Distant relatives with no financial dependency on you generally have no such claim.

A letter of wishes explaining your reasoning, alongside a clearly drafted and properly witnessed will, is the best protection against any dispute, even though most estates in this situation never see a challenge at all.