What happens to my Will if I get married?

While you may envisage endless years of gazing dreamily into each other’s eyes, there are practicalities around marriage that should be addressed.

One that’s often bottom of the to-do list is updating your Will. When you get married, any Will is revoked. Like Monty Python’s parrot, it is no more, it has ceased to be.

If you don’t write a new Will, the rules of intestacy kick in. Your surviving spouse will automatically receive up to the first £250,000 of the estate, which may be what you wanted anyway. Or it may not.

The only way to have a valid Will in place before you are hitched is to add a clause stating “in contemplation of marriage to…”. Your intended should be named. It’s no good saying that you just plan to get married sometime in the future. And the Will should make it clear that it should not be revoked when the marriage takes place. If you end up marrying someone else, the Will would become invalid.

We’ll look at the effects of divorce on a Will next time. If you have recently married and need to write a new Will, contact Heritage Will Writing on 02380 879243.