A last will and testament is a legal document that offers instructions for what should happen after you die. For most people, that means deciding who will inherit your belongings, including any assets, savings or property you own. It can also give instructions for your funeral arrangements, or establish a trust to manage assets like a business, an art collection or a family home in the long term.

Having a will means taking control over your legacy, and providing for the people you love after you pass away. It is a legal document, which means that the instructions inside must be carried out to the letter. While the importance of this is clear, many people don’t realise that writing a will is the only way to make sure your final wishes are enacted.

For that reason, it may not be entirely surprising that a large percentage of the British population has not written a will - in fact, more than half, according to several recent surveys and studies. Here, the wills and probate experts at PHR Solicitors break down the numbers to find out how many Brits don’t have a will, explain why it is important to write one, and look at some of the options that can give you more control over your estate after you pass away.

How many Brits do not have a will?

Over the last few years, several studies have been undertaken to determine the percentage of the UK population that has a will - and the percentage that doesn’t. While the numbers are slightly different in each case, the percentages are roughly equivalent, and indicate that around 60% of Brits do not have a will.

Fnancial services provider Canada Life found that as many as 31 million UK adults did not have a will in place as of 2020, representing 59% of respondents. Research conducted by Populus in 2018 found a similar result of 61%, equating to 30 million British adults, and results by Prudential from 2016 returned an estimate of 59%.

While many experts believed the COVID-19 pandemic would encourage more people to write wills, it has not done so. Canada Life’s survey from September 2020, and a separate study by IRN Research in November 2020, indicate that there was no significant growth in the number of people writing wills after the start of the pandemic.

Where demographic data was collected, survey results revealed that older people are more likely to have a will. However, only in the groups older than 65 did more than half of respondents have a will, according to Canada Life. To us, this indicates that there are challenges in how people perceive wills that we must overcome in order to make sure more people’s wishes are carried out after they die.

A study by the National Will Register found that, beyond not having a will, 42% of UK adults have not spoken to anyone about what should happen to their estates when they die. This suggests that a wish to avoid thinking about death - and potentially a misunderstanding of the legal importance of a last will and testament - holds people back from writing down their last wishes.

Why do more Brits not have wills?

Some of the studies linked above asked people their reasons for not having a will in place. In the Populus survey, 38% of people who do not have a will said that they do not have anything worth inheriting to explain why they have no will. 20% of respondents said that they had not even considered writing a will, while Canada Life received a similar response from 53% of respondents.

Meanwhile, the National Will Register found that while only 44% of respondents had made a will, 25% had made an informal document outlining their plans. This suggests another issue with the perception of wills that might be holding some people back. A will is a legal document that must be followed after you pass away. An informal document has no basis in law and, even when placed with a trusted loved one, cannot ensure that the testator’s wishes are carried out. In fact, the law may overrule this type of document and prevent your intentions from being fulfilled, as we will explain.

Why is a will important?

A will is the only way to guarantee that your wishes will be fulfilled when you pass away. For the roughly 60% of UK adults who do not have a will, intestacy laws will be used to determine what happens to their possessions when they die. These laws dictate who will inherit the deceased’s estate, which normally goes entirely to one party - the person’s spouse, parents or siblings - or is split between a spouse and any children. This cannot be changed.

As such, if the deceased has no spouse, civil partner, children or grandchildren, their parents must inherit; if they have no parents, their siblings or any descendants will inherit the estate, and so on. If the deceased has no relatives that are specified by the intestacy laws, their estate goes to the Crown. This can leave certain family members and loved ones without gifts - even if they have been informally promised. When someone has inherited according to the intestacy laws, they own the estate’s assets and have no obligation to pass them on, even if you have instructed them to do so.

Unfortunately, the intestacy rules do not provide for loved ones without a legal relationship to the deceased - this means that long-term (but unmarried) partners, close friends and others cannot inherit anything. In some cases, this means that the entire estate is given to the Crown and these loved ones get nothing. In others, the estate may go to a spouse from whom the deceased was separated but not divorced, or to another person who would not have received a gift were it up to the deceased.

For these reasons, it is vital to create a will to ensure that your estate is distributed according to your wishes. You do not need to have all of your decisions made before you start. In fact, if you work with an expert wills and probate solicitor, you can work through the process together. They can help to make sure you remember everything important, and ensure that the document is legally binding.

The team at Percy Hughes & Roberts Solicitors has a wealth of experience in this area, and can support you to make sure your intentions are expressed without ambiguity. We can help you to understand the wider implications of your decisions, or establish trusts to manage assets after your death. For example, if you wish to offer gifts to grandchildren who have not yet been born, or to hold back certain gifts until a beneficiary turns 18, our expert trust solicitors can help you to put those provisions in place.

Contact our team today to learn more, or to start the process. Call us on 0151 666 9090 or use our online contact form to get in touch.