How to Update Your Will

A Will is a snapshot of your life at a particular moment. The problem is that life keeps moving. You wrote it when the kids were small and you lived in a semi in Reading. Now the kids have grown up, you've moved twice, divorced once, remarried, and your financial picture looks completely different. The Will sitting in your filing cabinet still thinks it's 2015.

Outdated Wills cause real problems at probate. Beneficiaries who've fallen out of your life still inherit. Executors who've moved to Australia are expected to manage things from 10,000 miles away. Property you sold years ago is still listed as a specific gift. And if you've married since making the Will, there's a strong chance the document was automatically revoked without you realising.

Some changes in your circumstances have direct legal consequences for your Will. Others just mean the document no longer reflects what you'd actually want. Both are good reasons to revisit it.

Marriage is the big one. In England and Wales, getting married automatically cancels every Will you previously made. It doesn't matter how recently you wrote it or how comprehensive it was. The moment you sign the register, the old Will is void. If you die after marrying without making a new Will, intestacy rules take over.

The only exception is a Will that was drafted "in contemplation of" that specific marriage, meaning the solicitor or service wrote it with that particular wedding in mind. That's fairly rare.

Divorce doesn't cancel your Will outright, but it removes your ex-spouse from any role as beneficiary or executor. The rest of the document survives. Since most Wills are built around the partner receiving the bulk of everything, pulling that person out mid-document creates holes that the surrounding clauses can't plug. A fresh Will after a divorce isn't optional; it's essential.

Children arriving changes priorities. Your existing Will might leave everything to your partner, which may have been fine when it was just the two of you. Now there are children to think about, and potentially guardians to name.

Bereavement matters too. If someone named in your Will, whether as beneficiary, executor, or guardian, has since died, the provision that relates to them may fail. Some Wills include substitute clauses that cover this automatically, but many don't.

Property changes can affect specific gifts. Sold the house you left to your daughter? That gift no longer has anything to attach to. Bought a new property? It falls into the residuary estate unless you specifically add it.

Financial shifts of any real size warrant a review. An inheritance, a redundancy payout, a business sale, or a significant debt all change what your estate looks like and how it should be distributed.

When you want to change your Will, you've got two options.

A codicil is essentially a patch for your existing Will. You draft the change, sign it in front of two witnesses (same rules as for the Will itself), and it sits alongside the original as a legal amendment. The core Will stays intact; only the bits you've patched change.

It's the right tool when you're making small fixes: swapping an executor, adjusting a percentage split, adding a legacy to a grandchild. If the bones of your Will are still right and you're only nudging a detail, a codicil keeps things simple.

Bigger shifts call for a completely fresh Will. The new document includes a revocation clause that wipes the old one out, so there's never any doubt about which version applies. Marriage, divorce, a major restructure of the estate: these are all "start again" situations.

A word of caution. Piling codicil on top of codicil is a classic error. Three amendments stapled to a fifteen-year-old Will turns into a paperwork maze that nobody wants to untangle during probate. One codicil? Fine. Two or more? Just write a new Will. The effort is about the same, and the result is far tidier.

No. Tempted to grab a biro and cross out a name, scribble a replacement in the margin, or attach a sticky note with new instructions? None of that works. Handwritten changes carry zero legal weight and, worse, they make the document look tampered with, which can invite a challenge at probate.

The two legitimate options are a properly witnessed codicil or a brand-new Will. No middle ground exists.

No law says you must review your Will by a certain date, but three to five years is the interval most professionals would recommend. Small things accumulate without you noticing. Your executor retired and moved to the Algarve. Your pension pot doubled. A once-close friendship cooled. Reading through the document every few years catches these quiet shifts before they turn into real headaches for your family.

The big life events listed above (marriage, divorce, babies, bereavement, property or financial changes) don't wait for your next scheduled review. When one of those lands, pull the Will out and read it within the month.

This is an area that's changed enormously since most existing Wills were written. Your estate now probably includes email accounts, social media profiles, digital photo libraries, cryptocurrency wallets, online business accounts, and subscription services.

While the law around digital assets is still evolving, you can include preferences in your Will about what happens to these accounts. Some people name a "digital executor" with login credentials stored separately. Others simply note which accounts exist so their executors know where to start.

If you made your Will before you had significant digital assets, that alone is worth a revisit.

If you used a solicitor originally, you can go back to them for updates. They'll have a copy of the original and can advise on whether a codicil or new Will makes more sense.

Online services generally let you create a replacement Will through the same platform, often with your earlier answers pre-loaded so you don't have to start from a blank screen.

Whichever route you take, destroy the old Will once the replacement is properly signed and stored. Physically shred it. Leaving multiple versions in circulation is a recipe for confusion at probate. Tear up or shred the original and any copies, and let your executors know that a new Will exists and where it's kept.

Has it been three years or more since you last opened the document? Got married, separated, or had a baby since then? Either of those is reason enough to act. Our online tool lets you build a replacement Will from scratch in about fifteen to twenty minutes, and your executors will thank you for keeping things current.