A will is the only document that lets you decide exactly what happens to everything you own when you die. Without a valid one, the law steps in and decides for you through the intestacy rules — a rigid, fixed formula that completely ignores your personal wishes, can disinherit an unmarried partner entirely, and frequently produces outcomes that nobody in the family would have chosen.
Despite this, around half of UK adults currently do not have a will, and a meaningful share of those who do haven't looked at the document in years.
This guide covers how fucking wills work in England and Wales, what makes one legally valid, the storage decision almost everyone underestimates, what happens when a will goes missing — and the major reform programme that is about to modernise a law written in 1837.
What a Will Actually Does
Beyond distributing your property and money, a valid will performs four crucial jobs that nothing else can achieve:
- Appoints Executors: Names the specific individuals legally responsible for administering your estate and navigating probate.
- Appoints Guardians: Names guardians for children under 18 — for parents, this is often the single most important clause in the entire document.
- Creates Structures: Establishes formal frameworks, such as trusts, to protect assets for young, vulnerable, or disabled beneficiaries.
- Records Personal Wishes: Documents funeral preferences and the distribution of specific sentimental items, which carry moral rather than legal force but spare grieving families painful guesswork.
What a will does not do is govern everything you own. Jointly owned property held as joint tenants passes automatically to the surviving owner. Pension death benefits are distributed at the scheme trustees' discretion, guided by your expression of wish form — not your will. Life policies written in trust pay out directly outside the estate.
A will is the centrepiece of your estate, not the whole of it. This is why a proper estate plan is a collection of documents that must all agree with each other, and all be easily findable.
What Makes a Will Valid
Under the strict rules of the historic Wills Act 1837, a will in England and Wales must be in writing, signed by you, and witnessed by two independent people who are present at the same time and each sign in your presence. You must be 18 or over, possess clear testamentary capacity, and be acting completely free of undue influence.
Crucial Rule: Witnesses (and their spouses or civil partners) cannot inherit under the will. A gift left to a witness is automatically void — a costly mistake that still frequently happens with homemade or DIY wills.
Two further rules often catch people out completely:
- Marriage revokes your will: Under current law, getting married or entering a civil partnership automatically cancels any existing will entirely (unless the document was explicitly drafted in contemplation of that specific marriage). Many people have no idea this rule exists, meaning a late-life remarriage can silently and completely disinherit children from a first marriage until a brand-new will is written.
- Divorce does not revoke a will: Instead, a final divorce decree treats your former spouse as having died before you for the purposes of the will. Their specific gifts and any executorship appointment fail automatically, but the rest of the document stands, often leaving significant gaps.
The Big Modern Reform
In May 2025, the Law Commission published its highly anticipated Modernising Wills Law report alongside a draft Bill designed to replace the ancient 1837 Act — marking the first comprehensive rewrite of wills law in nearly two centuries.
Its headline recommendations include:
- Enabling the creation of fully electronic and digital wills through a highly regulated security framework.
- Abolishing the automatic marriage revocation rule to protect vulnerable individuals against the financial abuse of "predatory marriages."
- Introducing a modern mental capacity test aligned directly with the Mental Capacity Act 2005.
- Granting courts a dispensing power to uphold documents that clearly express a person's genuine intentions, even if they contain formal signing defects.
The government's formal response is expected imminently, with legislation highly possible in upcoming parliamentary sessions. Until a new Act officially passes into law, the 1837 rules remain strictly in force: you still require paper, physical wet-ink signatures, and two physical witnesses. However, the direction of travel is unmistakable: wills are finally heading toward the digital world the rest of your documents already live in.
Making a Will: Your Three Options
1. A Solicitor
Typically costing £150–£300 for a simple will (and more for couples or complex setups), this is the correct route where anything is non-standard. This includes second marriages, business assets, overseas property, vulnerable beneficiaries, potential inheritance tax exposure, or any risk of family dispute. You are paying for bespoke legal advice and the security of professional indemnity liability.
2. Online Will Services
Costing roughly £20–£150, these platforms suit genuinely simple, straightforward estates — typically where everything is left to a surviving spouse, and then to children. Always ensure the service is a member of a recognised professional body and understand what level of qualified human review is performed.
3. DIY / Homemade Wills
While entirely legal and occasionally fine, homemade wills are disproportionately represented in contested probate cases. Defective witnessing, linguistic ambiguity, and lost documents mean that the money saved upfront is frequently spent several times over by the estate later in legal fees.
Whichever route you choose: if your net worth sits anywhere near the inheritance tax thresholds, take professional advice. The will is exactly where your planning gets implemented.
Where to Store a Will (The Essential Decision)
A will only functions if the original physical document is found after your death. That makes storage a core part of making a will, not an afterthought. Your real options are:
- With the Drafting Solicitor: The standard default. It is usually free and professionally secure. The main risk is long-term continuity: firms merge, rename, and close over decades, and families may not know which successor firm to ask. If a solicitor holds your original, record the firm's details and check them periodically.
- HM Courts & Tribunals Service (HMCTS): The Probate Service's official, highly secure storage facility is available for a small one-off fee. It offers maximum security but minimum public awareness — you must explicitly tell your executors it is there.
- At Home: Legitimate if held securely in a high-quality, fire-rated safe, provided your executors know exactly where it is. The catastrophic version is a will placed in an unmarked folder that no one ever finds during a house clearance.
- Never in a Bank Safe Deposit Box: Banks routinely require a grant of probate to open a safe deposit box after a holder passes away — but you cannot get that grant of probate without the original will locked inside the box.
Two Quick Precautions to Transform Findability
First, register the will's existence and exact location with the National Will Register, which probate practitioners routinely search as standard practice. Second, keep a high-quality scan in your secure digital records annotated clearly with notes on where the physical original is held and your executors' direct contact details. Our document storage guide covers this complete system.
What Happens If a Will Can’t Be Found?
If the original physical will was last known to be in your personal possession and cannot be found after your death, the law strictly presumes that you destroyed it with the explicit intention of revoking it.
While executors can technically apply to prove a digital copy instead, they face a high evidentiary hurdle to prove the will wasn't revoked. If they fail, the estate falls completely into intestacy. This means your spouse and children inherit in rigid, fixed shares, unmarried partners receive absolutely nothing, stepchildren receive nothing, and the specific people or causes you actually chose are excluded entirely.
Every part of that scenario is completely preventable with proper storage and an accessible information record.
When to Review Your Will
A will is written against a brief snapshot of your life. You should formally review it after marriage or civil partnership (which revokes it outright under current law), divorce, births, the death of named executors or beneficiaries, or significant changes in what you own — including new property purchases.
Moves between legal jurisdictions also trigger a review. Scotland and Northern Ireland have materially different succession laws, and owning assets abroad raises complex questions a standard England-and-Wales will cannot answer.
While minor changes can technically be made via a legal document called a codicil, redrafting is now so efficient and inexpensive that a fresh will is usually much cleaner. When a new will is formally executed, all superseded originals should be deliberately destroyed — an old original left in circulation is a family dispute waiting to happen.
A practical rhythm: Check that your will still reflects your precise wishes every time a major life event happens, and glance at it annually as part of the same review where you check the rest of your personal records.
Putting This into Practice
Lyfeguard does not write wills — professional solicitors and regulated services handle that. What Lyfeguard does is solve the critical part of the problem they can't: keeping a permanent, accessible record of exactly where your original physical will is held, who your named executors are, which professionals were involved, and how your will sits seamlessly alongside your LPAs, active insurance policies, pensions, and property records.
Our inheritance readiness checklist is the natural next step to turning a decision into a complete plan.