Intestacy, unmarried and minor child

Spendless

RAS said:

TIC is often used for blended families.

Parent A leaves their portion to their biological children with life interest to survivor. 
Parent B leaves their portion to their biological children with life interest to survivor.

If there's no will, the children still inherit but the problem is the survivor's not protect by the life interest trust.

OK it also means any shared children could get twice as much as those from first families, but it ensures that all the children get something, as long as it's not eaten away by care fees.

That wouldn't happen with a joint tenancy if the surviving parent remarried and failed to make a will, or disinherited the children from the previous marriage.

Thank you. I thought I was missing something. In this case it's that there's no life interest to the other party.

Plus if there's little to no equity in the current house (a position I was in for the first 7 years of home ownership) then there isn't any/much proceeds of a sale to help towards purchasing somewhere else. 

pjs493

SVaz said:

They do plan to marry but who knows when!
He is named as the beneficiary on her Teacher’s pension death payout of 3x her salary of £50k ,  which would pay off approx 2/3rds of the current mortgage. 

The house is worth £350k ish so marriage at some point is definitely necessary. 

A friend losing his 35 year old Son recently has made me think about how messy this could all be. 

Trust me, it can still potentially get messy even if they are married with an untimely death. But it is sensible for them to have named each other as beneficiaries. They ought to be aware of the inheritance tax implications if they aren’t married and something happens (if IHT would be due). 

 My husband left everything to me in his Will and my parents in law don’t seem particularly happy with that. I’m not sure what they were expecting, but they seem to feel like they have some claim to his assets, and those we built up together, despite us being married for a long time and having two children together who will ultimately inherit everything.

I’ve heard a rumour that they’ve changed their Wills so that their surviving child will get everything despite their previous Wills stating that if one of their children died before them, that child’s share of their estate would go to their grandchildren from that child. An unexpected death makes people do strange things sometimes. I’ve not broached the subject with my in-laws, partly because it’s none of my business, but also because the relationship with them is fragile enough as it is without rocking the boat. 

In another example, my father was separated, but not divorced, from my step mum for about eight years and didn’t have a Will. If he’d had an accident she would have inherited everything and my sibling and I wouldn’t have gotten anything. My dad used to say that she’d just give it all to my sibling and I. But I’d always tell him he couldn’t be so sure, even though they had an amicable break up. I still don’t know if he’s made a Will. 

SVaz

With our wills,  everything is left to the other,  then when the last one dies,  80% goes to our Daughter, 20% to our Grandson,
 just to ringfence something for him alone.
When my Dad died,  there was no provision for Grandchildren, so I gifted part of my inheritance to my Daughter,  my Sister hasn’t said whether she gave her two Sons anything. 
I’d hope that with my Daughter and her partner, whoever is the last to go would leave their estate equally to the 3 children. 

I was very surprised to read that IHT would be due on the whole value of a jointly owned property if not married, not an issue in the early years with a large mortgage but after 10 years or so it could well be. 
The proposed cohabition rights bill needs to come in sooner rather than later, so many unmarried couples have no idea of the implications should one of them die intestate. 

I had to prompt my Daughter to change her life cover beneficiary to her partner,  me and my Wife were the original ones but presumably our Grandson’s birth would have overridden that. 

pjs493

SVaz said:

I had to prompt my Daughter to change her life cover beneficiary to her partner,  me and my Wife were the original ones but presumably our Grandson’s birth would have overridden that. 

Potentially only if she updated it to name your grandson as the beneficiary. 

Before my sister had children I was named as the beneficiary in her workplace pension. I had to remind her to update it once she had her first child. The birth of her child didn’t automatically change things (like a marriage will revoke previously written Wills). If something happened to her, it could have been possible that her workplace pension would assume there was a reason why I was named and ensure it went to me because they could have assumed that for whatever reason it was her wish. 

When a friend of mine was going through a very long and lengthy acrimonious divorce, he wrote a new Will and changed the beneficiary for his workplace pension. He was worried that if he got knocked down by a bus, his soon-to-be ex-wife would get everything which was no longer his wish. They didn’t have any children so he wrote a new Will and named his nephew as the beneficiary of his pension.