When someone dies without a valid will in England and Wales, the law decides who inherits, using a fixed order of priority called the intestacy rules. The short answer: a surviving spouse or civil partner inherits everything if there are no children. If there are children, the spouse takes the personal possessions, the first £322,000 (the statutory legacy) and half of anything above that, while the children share the other half equally. If there is no spouse or civil partner, the children inherit everything in equal shares. Only if there are neither does the estate pass to parents, then siblings, then more distant relatives, and ultimately to the Crown if nobody qualifies.
Two groups get nothing automatically, however unfair it feels: unmarried partners and stepchildren who were never adopted. The rules were written for a traditional family shape and they have no flexibility. If reading this makes you realise the default rules would let your own family down, the fix is straightforward: our free making a will checklist shows you exactly what a will needs to cover in a few minutes, before you speak to anyone or spend anything. The rest of this guide covers England and Wales (Scotland has a different system, flagged below) and works through the full order, with real numbers.
The intestacy order of priority: the full waterfall
The order comes from section 46 of the Administration of Estates Act 1925, as amended. Each category only inherits if every category above it is empty. Within a category, relatives share equally, and if a relative in that category died before the person who died, their own children step into their share (lawyers call this taking per stirpes).
- Spouse or civil partner (must survive by 28 days). Takes everything if there are no children; shares with children as set out below if there are. Divorce or dissolution removes this right; separation, even for decades, does not.
- Children, in equal shares, including adopted children and children from any relationship, but not stepchildren. A child of the deceased who has already died is replaced by their own children (the grandchildren).
- Parents, equally if both alive.
- Full siblings (brothers and sisters sharing both parents), or their children if a sibling has died.
- Half siblings, or their children.
- Grandparents.
- Full aunts and uncles, or their children (the deceased's first cousins).
- Half aunts and uncles, or their children.
- The Crown, as bona vacantia, if nobody in any category above survives.
Notice who never appears on the list: cohabiting partners, stepchildren, parents in law, sons and daughters in law, close friends, carers, godchildren and charities. Under intestacy they receive nothing, whatever was promised. We cover the cohabitation gap, which is the most painful one in practice, in depth in our guide to intestacy rules for unmarried partners.
The spouse and children split: how the £322,000 statutory legacy works
The most common intestacy scenario is a married person or civil partner dying and leaving both a spouse and children. Here the estate is divided in a specific way, using a figure called the statutory legacy, currently fixed at £322,000 for deaths on or after 26 July 2023:
- The spouse or civil partner receives all personal possessions (the car, jewellery, furniture and so on).
- The spouse receives the first £322,000 of the remaining estate outright, plus interest from the date of death.
- Anything above £322,000 is split in half: one half to the spouse, the other half shared equally between the children.
Children inherit their share at 18 (or on earlier marriage or civil partnership); until then it is held in trust for them. If the estate is worth £322,000 or less, the spouse takes everything and the children receive nothing. The precise mechanics of the spouse and children scenario, including what happens with minor children, second marriages and the family home, are covered in our dedicated guide to the intestacy rules for spouses and children.
Worked examples in pounds
The rules only really land when you see them applied. All three examples assume the assets were in the sole name of the person who died (jointly owned assets behave differently, see below).
| Scenario | Estate value | Who gets what |
|---|---|---|
| Married, 2 children | £500,000 | Spouse: possessions + £322,000 + half of the £178,000 balance (£89,000) = £411,000. Children: £89,000 shared, so £44,500 each. |
| Married, 2 children | £300,000 | Spouse takes everything (estate is below the £322,000 statutory legacy). Children: nothing. |
| Unmarried couple, 20 years together, 1 child | £400,000 | Partner: nothing. The child inherits the entire £400,000 (in trust until 18 if a minor). |
The third row is the one that shocks people. A surviving cohabitee can be left with no home and no money while their own child inherits everything, managed by administrators, until adulthood. Where a spouse does inherit a substantial estate, it is also worth checking the inheritance tax position: transfers between spouses are exempt, and unused allowances transfer, giving many couples a combined threshold of up to £1,000,000 on the second death, explained in our guide to the inheritance tax threshold for married couples.
What the intestacy rules do not touch
Not everything a person owned passes under intestacy. Three big categories bypass the rules entirely:
- Jointly owned property held as joint tenants. The home passes automatically to the surviving co owner by survivorship, whoever the intestacy rules would otherwise favour. Property held as tenants in common is different: the deceased's share does pass under intestacy.
- Joint bank accounts, which pass to the surviving account holder.
- Assets with their own nomination, such as life insurance written in trust and pension death benefits paid at the scheme's discretion.
This is why an unmarried partner who jointly owns the home as joint tenants keeps the home even though intestacy gives them nothing else. For surviving husbands, wives and civil partners, the interaction between survivorship and intestacy is covered in our guide to whether you need probate when a spouse dies, and there is a dedicated hub for surviving spouses and civil partners.
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Scotland has different rules
Everything above applies to England and Wales only. Scotland runs a separate system built on prior rights and legal rights, with different cash figures, a value cap on the home, and protected shares for children that exist even where there is a will. If the person who died was domiciled in Scotland, use our guide to the Scottish intestacy rules instead; applying the English rules to a Scottish estate is a common and expensive mistake. Northern Ireland has its own variant too, with a different statutory legacy.
Who deals with the estate, and what happens next
With no will there is no executor. Instead, the person entitled to administer the estate (usually the spouse first, then the children, following broadly the same order as inheritance) applies for a grant of letters of administration rather than a grant of probate. The application process is otherwise similar: the same £526 court fee applies once the estate exceeds £5,000. Budget more time than the widely quoted probate figure, though. In the January to March 2026 HMCTS statistics, letters of administration took a mean of 10.5 weeks from submission to grant against 5.0 weeks for grants of probate, and the median was 11.0 weeks. Applying online is what closes the gap: digital applications for letters of administration averaged 5.1 weeks, but only 45.3% of them were made digitally, against 92.6% of probate applications. Our probate wait times index tracks the split by grant type, and our probate hub explains the whole process, and the procedural differences between the will and no will routes are set out in do you need probate if there is a will.
If you have just discovered you are the person who has to sort all this out, the early practical steps (registering the death, securing the property, finding the assets) are the same as for a named executor. Our guide to the first 30 days for executors walks through them in order.
Can the outcome be changed?
Two safety valves exist, and both have limits. First, the adult beneficiaries can agree a deed of variation within two years of the death, redirecting inheritance, for example to provide for a cohabiting partner the rules ignored. This needs everyone entitled to agree, and it cannot bind the shares of children under 18 without a court's approval. Second, certain people, including cohabitants of at least two years and anyone financially maintained by the deceased, can apply to the court under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975 for reasonable provision. That is a court claim with deadlines, costs and no guaranteed outcome. Neither route is a plan; both are damage control.
The obvious conclusion: the rules are a default, not a plan
The intestacy rules are a blunt instrument. They can disinherit a partner of 20 years, hand an entire estate to an estranged relative, and split assets in ways that force a home to be sold. Every one of those outcomes is avoidable with a valid will, and making one is neither slow nor expensive. Start with our free making a will checklist to see exactly what you need to decide, then read our wills hub for what makes a will valid and what it should cover.
If you are dealing with an intestate estate now, or you want a will drawn up properly rather than left to the default rules, we can connect you with a vetted specialist for a no obligation conversation. This guide is general information about the law in England and Wales, not legal advice on your circumstances.