What happens to your house if you die without a will?

If you own a home and you haven't made a will, the law has already decided who gets it — and it may not be who you think. For most people the house is the single biggest thing they own, yet what happens to it on death is governed by two things most homeowners have never looked at: how the property is legally owned, and the intestacy rules that apply when there is no will.

First question: how do you own your home?

Before the intestacy rules even enter the picture, the deeds decide a great deal. Co-owned property in England & Wales is held in one of two ways.

• Joint tenants — on death, your share passes automatically to the surviving co-owner by “survivorship”. This happens outside your estate entirely: will or no will, the survivor takes the whole property.
• Tenants in common — you each own a defined share. Your share does not pass automatically; it falls into your estate and is distributed under your will, or, without one, under the intestacy rules.

A property in your sole name works like a tenant-in-common share: the whole house falls into your estate. So for sole owners and tenants in common, everything below applies in full.

Married with children: your spouse does not get everything

This surprises almost everyone. If you die intestate leaving a spouse or civil partner and children, your spouse takes your personal possessions, a fixed “statutory legacy” — currently £322,000 — and half of everything above that figure. Your children share the other half, taking it at 18.

If the house is the main asset, that split can bite hard. The surviving spouse can end up co-owning the family home with the children — and in unhappy cases, facing pressure to sell it so shares can be paid out. That is rarely what anyone would have chosen; it is simply what the default rules produce.

Unmarried partners: the harshest rule of all

If you are not married or in a civil partnership, your partner has no automatic right to inherit anything under the intestacy rules — not the house, not a penny. It makes no difference whether you have been together two years or forty.

If the home is in your sole name, it passes down your blood family line — children, parents, siblings — and your partner can be left negotiating with your relatives to remain in the home they live in. (Joint tenancy is the one saving grace here: survivorship would pass the house to them — but only that one asset.)

No spouse, no children?

The intestacy rules then work down a fixed list: parents first, then full siblings, then more distant relatives. If no qualifying relative exists at all, your estate — house included — passes to the Crown as bona vacantia. The people who actually mattered to you — a partner, stepchildren, close friends, a charity — appear nowhere on that list.

The fix is simpler than the problem

A properly drafted will replaces all of this with your actual wishes: who gets the house, who benefits from its value, and on what terms. It can also deal with the ownership question — for couples, reviewing whether joint tenancy or tenancy in common better suits your intentions is often part of the same conversation.

For the cost of a fixed fee — less than many families spend on a weekend away — the largest asset you own stops being governed by a default formula written by Parliament, and starts being governed by you.