Can I leave my husband out of my will, legally?

Figgerty

Thank you all for the really useful advise.

I plan to make an appointment with a solicitor this week to make my will and possibly discuss a divorce as we are not going to reconcile after all this time. I think I will leave my husband about £1k to spend on a round of drinks in his golf club. Hopefully that will make him feel good and stop him contesting my will. Will a divorce make my will invalid in the same way as marriage can make a will invalid.

TBagpuss

When your divorce is finalised, any gift to your husband fails (the will is implemented as if he died on the date of the Decree Absolute) but the rest of the will remains valid. So if you leave him £1,000 and then divorce him, he won;t get the £1,000 but the rest of your will will still be valid, and the £1,000 will form part of your residuary estate, and go to whoever your residuary beneficiary is.

If you update your will after you are divorced you could, if you wished, still chose to leave him a gift and if this was made after the divorce the gift would be valid.

I can;t remember off the top of my head whether you can specifically state that you want a gift made in a will before a divorce to remain valid even following a divorce but I think you probably can, if you explicitly state in the will the gift shall take effect even if you divorce him, but if you wanted to do so your solicitor will be able to advise.

Figgerty

TBagpuss wrote: »

When your divorce is finalised, any gift to your husband fails (the will is implemented as if he died on the date of the Decree Absolute) but the rest of the will remains valid. So if you leave him £1,000 and then divorce him, he won;t get the £1,000 but the rest of your will will still be valid, and the £1,000 will form part of your residuary estate, and go to whoever your residuary beneficiary is.

If you update your will after you are divorced you could, if you wished, still chose to leave him a gift and if this was made after the divorce the gift would be valid.

I can;t remember off the top of my head whether you can specifically state that you want a gift made in a will before a divorce to remain valid even following a divorce but I think you probably can, if you explicitly state in the will the gift shall take effect even if you divorce him, but if you wanted to do so your solicitor will be able to advise.

Thanks for the good advice.

I plan to ask the solicitor about that as I know if you make a will before getting married there may be a question about validity after the marriage unless you specifically mention your forthcoming marriage. I remember seeing that somewhere when I was researching my own situation.