Registered number: 10816512.
Registered office: Squiggle Consult Ltd, Suite 2069, Letraset Building, Wotton Road, Ashford, Kent, TN23 6LN
Squiggle Consult Ltd. is a limited company registered in England and Wales.
A Will is written once, but life carries on around it for years. Children arrive, marriages begin and end, houses are bought and sold, executors die. The Will sits in a drawer saying exactly what it said on the day it was signed, and the gap between the document and your life widens silently.
This factsheet explains when to review your Will, how to change it safely, and what limited options exist after a death. If you do not yet have a Will, start with our Writing Your Will and Intestacy: Who Inherits Without a Will factsheets.
Review your Will after any of the following, and as a rule of thumb every three to five years even if nothing obvious has changed.
Marriage or civil partnership. In England and Wales, marriage or civil partnership automatically revokes (legally cancels) an existing Will, unless the Will was made expressly in contemplation of that specific marriage or partnership. A couple who marry with old Wills are, from the moment of the ceremony, intestate (without a valid Will, so the law decides who inherits) without realising it.
Divorce or dissolution of a civil partnership. Divorce does not revoke your Will. Instead, from the date of the final order (formerly the decree absolute), the law treats your former spouse or civil partner as having died before you for the purposes of the Will, unless the Will expressly says otherwise: any gift to them fails, and any appointment of them as executor (the person legally responsible for carrying out your Will) or trustee falls away. Separation alone changes nothing; until the final order, your spouse inherits as the Will says. The rest stands, but if your ex was your sole executor and main beneficiary with no substitutes named, the Will may have almost nothing left to say.
New children or grandchildren. A Will that names children individually will not automatically include one born later. Wills can be drafted to cover future children as a class, but many are not, so check.
Moving house. If your Will leaves a specific property by address and you have since sold it, that gift simply fails.
A significant change in wealth. An inheritance, a business sale or a downturn changes the arithmetic. Fixed cash gifts that were modest against your estate ten years ago may now swallow most of it.
Deaths of executors or beneficiaries. If an executor, guardian or beneficiary has died, the Will needs reviewing even if substitutes were named.
In practice there are two reliable ways to change a Will.
A codicil (a formal written amendment to an existing Will) must be signed and witnessed with the same strict formalities as a Will itself: in writing, signed by you, with two independent witnesses present at the same time. It sits alongside the original Will and modifies it, and is only really suitable for very small, self-contained changes, such as updating an executor or adjusting a single cash legacy. Multiple codicils, or a codicil making structural changes, create a paper trail that is easy to misread and easy to challenge.
A new Will is almost always the better answer. It opens by expressly revoking all earlier Wills and codicils, so there is one document, one date, one set of instructions, and making it forces a full review, which is usually overdue anyway.
What you must never do is write on the original. Crossing out a name, squeezing in a new figure, adding a note in the margin: alterations made after signing are generally invalid, and they can do worse than fail, casting doubt on what the Will originally said and inviting disputes about when changes were made.
When you make a new Will, the old one should be destroyed and the new original kept somewhere safe and findable. A Will last known to be in your possession that cannot be found after death is presumed destroyed by you with the intention of revoking it; the family may be able to rebut that with a copy and evidence, but it is slow, uncertain and expensive. Tell your executors where the original is held, consider professional storage, and never staple or clip anything to it.
Get an instant estimate with our free calculator. Try the IHT Calculator →
Most couples make mirror Wills (two separate Wills with matching terms, typically everything to each other, then to the children). Each Will belongs to its maker, and either of you can change yours at any time, before or after the other's death, without telling anyone. That flexibility is normally a strength, but it means a surviving partner can rewrite the plan entirely, which matters in blended families.
Mutual Wills (Wills made under a binding agreement that neither party will change them without the other's consent) are different. Once the first person dies, the survivor is legally bound, and the courts will enforce the agreement against their estate even if they sign a new Will. Mutual Wills are rare, hard to prove and rigid: they cannot adapt to remarriage, care fees or a changed family. A life interest trust in a conventional Will is usually a far better tool: see our Writing Your Will factsheet.
A Will cannot be amended after death, but its effect can be. A deed of variation (a formal document in which a beneficiary redirects some or all of their inheritance to someone else) can be made within two years of the death. If it contains the required statutory statements, the variation is read back to the death for Inheritance Tax and Capital Gains Tax purposes, as if the deceased had left the gift that way. Beneficiaries can only redirect their own entitlement, and anyone giving something up must be an adult with mental capacity, must agree and must sign. Variations are often used to provide for someone the Will missed, or to improve the tax position: see our Inheritance Tax Mitigation factsheet.
A Will can only be made or changed while you have testamentary capacity (the legal ability to understand what a Will is, what you own, and who might expect to benefit). Once capacity is lost, through dementia, brain injury or otherwise, the door closes. A Lasting Power of Attorney (a legal document appointing people you trust, called attorneys, to make decisions for you if you cannot) does not open it: attorneys can manage your finances but have no power to make or change your Will. The only route is a statutory Will (a Will authorised by the Court of Protection for someone lacking capacity), a slow, costly and genuinely rare procedure. So review early and often, and put Lasting Powers of Attorney in place alongside the Will while you can.
A homemade codicil carries every risk of a homemade Will (invalid witnessing, ambiguous wording, accidental conflict with the original), plus one of its own: it can become separated from the Will it amends. Professional updating starts from the questions a kit never asks. Has marriage or divorce already changed the position? Does the planning still work? It also almost always concludes with a clean new Will rather than a patch.
Imagine Margaret, widowed at 68, who made a Will in 2014 leaving everything equally to her two children, with her brother as executor. By 2026 her brother has died, a third grandchild has arrived, and Margaret has married a longstanding friend, Derek. The marriage revoked her 2014 Will, so she is intestate: Derek would take her personal possessions, the statutory legacy (the fixed sum a spouse receives first under intestacy) and half of the remainder, leaving her children far less than she intended. A new Will names her children as executors, gives Derek a life interest trust over the house, leaves gifts to all grandchildren as a class, and revokes everything earlier. This is a hypothetical example for illustration only.
Assuming the old Will survived your wedding. Marriage and civil partnership revoke an existing Will unless it was made in contemplation of that marriage. Newlyweds with old Wills are usually intestate.
Assuming divorce cancels everything. Only the gifts to, and appointments of, the former spouse fail. The rest of the Will stands, gaps and all.
Writing changes on the original. Crossings-out and marginal notes are generally invalid and can undermine the whole document.
Not destroying the old Will, or losing the new one. Two originals with different dates invite a dispute, and a missing original may be presumed revoked.
Waiting until capacity is in doubt. A Will changed during a period of questionable capacity is the easiest Will to challenge. Review while the question does not arise.
Pick a time that suits you and your local Squiggle consultant will call you. No charge, no obligation. Book a call or call 01233 659 796.
Talk to Squiggle: 01233 659 796 | hello@squiggleconsult.co.uk | www.squiggleconsult.co.uk | Book a free call: meet.squiggleconsult.co.uk
This factsheet is general information for England and Wales, not legal, tax or financial advice. Last reviewed: June 2026.
Registered number: 10816512.
Registered office: Squiggle Consult Ltd, Suite 2069, Letraset Building, Wotton Road, Ashford, Kent, TN23 6LN
Squiggle Consult Ltd. is a limited company registered in England and Wales.
