You have been together fifteen years. You share a home, perhaps children, and people call you his common law wife or her common law husband. In England and Wales none of that gives you what a married couple has, and it matters most at the moment nobody wants to think about.

Research for the British Social Attitudes survey, published in 2019, found close to half of people wrongly believed living together long enough created a common law marriage. The House of Commons Library noted the figure had barely shifted since 2005. The Office for National Statistics counted around 3.5 million cohabiting couple families in the UK in 2025, many relying on rights they do not have.

The good news is that this is one of the easier things to put right.

Common law marriage does not exist in England and Wales

The phrase is everywhere and the law here does not recognise it. Living together, buying a house and raising children give you none of what married couples and civil partners get automatically.

What happens if your partner dies without a will

When someone dies without a valid will in England and Wales, their estate is shared out under the intestacy rules in the Administration of Estates Act 1925. Those rules set a fixed order: a husband, wife or civil partner first, then children and their descendants, then parents, then brothers and sisters, then grandparents, then aunts and uncles. If nobody on the list survives, the estate goes to the Crown.

The list sets who inherits first, not how much. Where someone leaves a spouse or civil partner and children, the estate is divided between them.

An unmarried partner is not at the bottom of the list. They are not on it at all.

Someone who has lived with their partner for twenty-five years, in a house their partner owned, could watch the whole estate pass to an elderly parent or to a sibling nobody had seen in years. There is no tax relief to soften it either: the inheritance tax exemption for passing assets to a partner covers spouses and civil partners only.

Is my partner my next of kin?

Not for this purpose. Hospitals and care homes use "next of kin" informally and will usually accept whoever you name, but the term carries no inheritance rights. The probate guidance is blunter still: you cannot apply to deal with the estate if you were the partner of the person who died but were not their husband, wife or civil partner. Children, parents and siblings can apply. A partner cannot.

What sits outside the estate

Some things never reach the intestacy rules at all, which is why two couples in identical situations end up somewhere very different.

• Joint tenants. If you own your home this way, your share passes automatically to the surviving owner when you die. It does not pass under a will or the intestacy rules.
• Tenants in common. Here you each own a defined share. That share forms part of the estate, so with no will it travels down the intestacy list, away from your partner.
• Pensions. Most workplace and personal pensions are paid at the discretion of the scheme's trustees or administrators. You name who you would like to benefit on an expression of wish or nomination form. They will normally take account of it, though they are not generally bound by it.
• Joint bank accounts. These usually pass to the surviving account holder.

Which applies to you was often decided years ago, by paperwork nobody has looked at since.

Claiming under the Inheritance Act 1975

There is a route for a surviving partner, and it runs through the court. The Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975 lets certain people ask for financial provision out of an estate. A cohabiting partner can apply if they lived in the same household as the person who died, as if they were a married couple or civil partners, for the whole of the two years immediately before the death.

Two limits matter. A court can only award a cohabiting partner what is reasonable for their maintenance, while a surviving husband, wife or civil partner faces no such cap. And an application is normally made within six months of the grant of representation, though the court can allow a late one.

Making a claim is a long way from simply inheriting. It costs money and takes time, at the worst possible moment. Anyone in that position should speak to a solicitor who handles Inheritance Act claims quickly, because of that time limit.

The law may change, but it has not changed yet

In June 2026 the government opened a consultation, "A fairer end to relationships", proposing that some cohabiting partners should automatically inherit where there is no will. It closed in August 2026 and the responses are still being analysed. No government response has been published.

The proposals are real. They are not yet law. As at October 2026, a surviving unmarried partner in England and Wales inherits nothing under the intestacy rules.

Three things to sort out now

None of this calls for anything elaborate. Write a will that says what you want to happen, and you can book a free Will appointment to get that moving. Check how your home is owned, because joint tenants and tenants in common lead to very different places. Then make sure your pension nomination is up to date and names the right person.

The same gap opens up if you lose capacity rather than die. An unmarried partner has no automatic right to manage your money or speak for you about your care, which is what a Lasting Power of Attorney is for. A single Will with us is £295, and our estate planning services page sets out the rest of our fixed fees.

Existing wills are worth another read. People move house, separate and have children, and a will written for a different life may not still fit.

If you would like to talk any of this through, you can book a free consultation with us. No pressure, just a friendly chat.

Squiggle Consult are estate planning consultants, not solicitors, and are not regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. This article is general information for England and Wales, correct as at October 2026, and was written before the Autumn Budget of 28 October 2026. It is not legal or financial advice, and the rules can change. Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own intestacy rules. Please seek personal advice about your own circumstances.