However, I made sure to include clauses stating that when they get married, the Wills should not be cancelled. Under normal circumstances, getting married cancels any previous Will a person has written. These clauses need to be written carefully to ensure they are effective.
Sometimes a marriage cancelling a Will can be entirely innocent. For example, a childless person might have written a Will leaving their estate to their parents or siblings, but then they marry and want to leave their estate to their new spouse. Or someone marries for the second time and needs to write a Will that ensures their estate doesn’t all go to their new spouse (if at all), but includes their children from their first marriage. This is something that the new spouse will often be completely on board with, especially if they want to do the same for their own children from their previous relationship – but it needs formalizing in a Will.
However, the law that marriage cancels a Will (it is currently being reviewed by the government for potential scrapping) can be used in a more sinister way through predatory marriage. One case shown on Channel 5’s Inheritance Wars programme involved an elderly lady who suffered from dementia yet married a younger man without her family’s knowledge not long before her death. As her Will leaving her estate to her children was cancelled, this lady’s husband inherited her property and crucially, was able to decide on her funeral and burial, which was carried out in a way her children believed was different from what she would have wanted.
In a second marriage where children are present from previous relationships, writing a Will is crucial to ensuring previous children still benefit and to prevent inheritance being completely lost to a new spouse’s family. Often, both spouses are keen to avoid this because they both have children from previous relationships. Without Wills, there is a very real risk of children being disinherited.