The seven events that put work on someone else
At each of these, a household moves from owning instruments to needing them — usually under pressure, often by someone other than the person at the centre.
Someone has died
The most demanding continuity event of all. Within days, the family moves from passive ownership of documents to active operational work — under emotional load, against institutional deadlines.
Open the review→Capacity is failing, or lost
The person is still here, but can no longer make or communicate a particular decision. The operational moment is not abstract — it is the point at which someone else must prove authority to act.
Open the review→Serious illness or hospitalisation
A continuity event even where legal capacity is fully retained. The person may be unavailable, hospitalised, or cognitively overloaded — able to decide, but unable to run the household.
Open the review→Separation or divorce
Dissolution does not only change a relationship. It can leave a will technically operative but substantively hollowed out — and pension and insurance nominations pointing at the wrong person.
Open the review→A new child or dependent
The arrival of a child or a new dependent alters the household's obligations — but updates none of the instruments that carry them. A will drafted before the child was born rarely names a guardian.
Open the review→A business transition
A category of event, not a single one: sale, restructuring, retirement, a partner's admission or exit, or the death or incapacity of an owner or key person. For a business household, several things move at once.
Open the review→A sudden absence or emergency
The most acute of the primary events, because it creates operational demand without triggering any settled legal category. The person may simply be unavailable — abroad, hospitalised, detained, unreachable.
Open the review→The four events that quietly date your records
These rarely demand action on the day. They create a review obligation — and their whole cost is what happens if the review never comes before the next event above.
You've received an inheritance
A secondary event — not because it matters less, but because it modifies your existing state rather than placing a substitute operator in control. Its significance is in what happens if you don't review.
Open the review→Remarriage or a civil partnership
A secondary event with a sharp legal edge: marriage or civil partnership can revoke an earlier will entirely — leaving a blended family relying on intestacy rules that may not reflect anyone's intention.
Open the review→An international relocation
A secondary event that layers jurisdictions onto an existing plan. The conceptual structure of continuity travels; the legal routes do not — they must not be read across borders without jurisdiction-specific advice.
Open the review→A significant asset change
A secondary event whose whole significance is the review it should trigger. A purchase, sale, large gift, windfall or pension decision can move the estate across thresholds the existing plan assumed away.
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The eleven-event model is set out in the Standard Index working paper The Continuity Event Taxonomy (SIG-WP-2026-02). Guidance for England & Wales — information about what the law requires and which records make it usable, not personalised legal or financial advice.