Rules of Intestacy

New provisions of the Inheritance and Trustees’ Powers Act 2014 come into force on the 1^st October and they change the way in which a person’s estate is divided if they die without a valid will.

If the deceased person has a spouse or civil partner but no children, their surviving partner will inherit everything. Currently the other person may have to share the estate with the deceased’s surviving parents or siblings.

If the deceased person has children, the surviving spouse will receive a statutory legacy of £250,000 together with the deceased’s personal belongings (as well as half the estate).

The new intestacy laws also alter the position of adopted children to ensure they do not lose any potential claim to inheritance, and expand the definition of who can make a claim to an estate to include a person ‘treated as a child of the family’.

Click here for full details of the new legislation