If your unmarried partner dies without a will, you inherit nothing. Here is how the rules work.

If your unmarried partner dies in England or Wales without a will, the rules of intestacy decide what happens to their estate. Those rules, set out in the Administration of Estates Act 1925 (as amended), do not include cohabiting partners. No matter how long you have lived together, owned a home together, or raised children together, you have no automatic right to inherit.

What intestacy actually does

When someone dies intestate, their estate passes in a fixed order:

1. Spouse or civil partner (if alive), plus children under set rules 2. Children, in equal shares 3. Parents 4. Siblings (or their children) 5. Half-siblings, then grandparents, then aunts and uncles 6. The Crown, if there are no qualifying relatives

A cohabiting partner appears nowhere in that list. The home you shared, if it was in your partner's sole name, passes to whoever is next in line under those rules.

The Inheritance Act route

There is a separate route for cohabitants to apply to a court for financial provision: the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975, as amended by the Law Reform (Succession) Act 1995. Under section 1(1A), a person who was living with the deceased as if they were a spouse for the two years immediately before death can apply for reasonable financial provision from the estate.

Important features of this route:

• It is an application, not an automatic right. The court decides what, if anything, to award.
• The time limit is six months from the grant of probate.
• The court considers the applicant's needs, resources, and the size of the estate.
• It involves legal costs, evidence, and (usually) months of process.

This is not the same as the rights a spouse has. It is the legal system's way of providing a possible remedy, not a guarantee.

Inheritance tax

Married couples and civil partners benefit from the spouse exemption: transfers between them, on death or during life, are exempt from inheritance tax. The unused portion of the nil rate band (currently £325,000) can also be transferred to the surviving spouse.

Cohabitants have neither. A cohabiting partner inheriting from the other (under a will, if one exists) pays inheritance tax at 40% on the value above the nil rate band, subject to any applicable reliefs.

The straightforward fixes

Most of this is fixable with two documents:

• A will that names your partner. Without a will, the rules of intestacy run automatically.
• A lasting power of attorney, in case of incapacity rather than death.

If you own property together, a Declaration of Trust and a check of whether you hold the property as joint tenants or tenants in common is the third document. Joint tenancy passes automatically by survivorship; tenancy in common passes under the will (or intestacy).

For the financial framework that sits behind these documents, a private financial agreement records what both partners have agreed about contributions, ownership, and intentions while both are alive. It is also useful evidence in any later Inheritance Act claim.

The gap between what unmarried partners assume they have and what they actually have is widest at the moment when one of them dies. The fix takes an afternoon, not a year.