What the law actually says
In England and Wales, living together confers no automatic inheritance rights at all. The intestacy rules — the statutory order that applies when someone dies without a valid will — have one category for a partner, and it is spouse or civil partner. There is no second category for a cohabitant, no length of relationship that creates one, and no exception for couples with children together.
Where there is no surviving spouse or civil partner, the estate runs down a fixed order: children and their descendants take the whole estate equally; if none, parents; if none, whole siblings or their children; then half-siblings; then grandparents; then aunts and uncles. Only if no qualifying relative exists at all does the estate pass to the Crown as bona vacantia. A surviving cohabitant is not on that list at any point on it.
One thing worth checking first.
If your partner was still legally married to someone else — separated for years, but never divorced — that spouse is on the list, and ranks first on it. It is the single most common way a cohabiting household discovers the gap in its sharpest form. The intestacy checker works through who takes what in that situation, including the spouse's statutory legacy, which this page deliberately does not restate.
“Common law marriage” is not a legal status in England and Wales, and has not been since 1753. Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act of 1753 ended it. Living together, however long, confers none of the automatic rights of marriage or civil partnership. The House of Commons Women and Equalities Committee examined the belief formally and found that the myth leaves cohabitants disproportionately at risk — which is a polite way of saying that people plan their lives around a protection that does not exist, and find out on the worst day.
If the question is the house specifically, who inherits the house when there is no will takes the property angle further than this page does. §II below covers the part that decides it for a cohabiting couple: how the two of you held it.
What passes to you anyway, outside the will and outside intestacy
This is the section that matters most, and it is the one almost nobody reads first. The intestacy rules only govern the estate — what your partner owned in their sole name, or their share of what was held as tenants in common. A great deal of what a household actually depends on never enters the estate at all, and is therefore untouched by the absence of a will. The table below is what to check, in what order, and where the answer is written down.
| What it is | Does it reach you? | What actually decides it | How to check |
|---|---|---|---|
| Family A — the home and the accounts | |||
| The home, owned as joint tenants | Yes — automatically | Survivorship. The whole of the property passes to the surviving owner on death, outside the estate. A joint tenant cannot leave their share by will, and it does not pass under the intestacy rules. | An official copy of the register from HM Land Registry. No Form A restriction indicates a joint tenancy. |
| The home, owned as tenants in common | No | The deceased's share forms part of their estate and passes under their will, or with no will under the intestacy rules — so a cohabiting partner takes nothing from that share unless named in a will. | A Form A restriction on the register — “No disposition by a sole proprietor… under which capital money arises is to be registered unless authorised by an order of the court” — indicates tenants in common. |
| The home in your partner's sole name | No | There is no co-owner to survive to. The whole of it is estate property and the intestacy rules decide it. | The HM Land Registry title will name a sole proprietor. |
| A joint bank or building society account | Yes — automatically | UK joint accounts are normally held with a right of survivorship: the funds pass to the surviving account holder regardless of the will or the intestacy rules, and a will cannot override it by purporting to leave “my share” elsewhere. | The account mandate the bank holds. Ask the bank how the account is held before assuming. |
| An account in your partner's sole name | No | Estate property. It follows the intestacy rules like everything else held alone. | — |
| Family B — pensions and insurance | |||
| A workplace or personal pension death benefit | Possibly — at someone's discretion | Most workplace and personal pension death benefits — particularly defined-contribution schemes held in trust — are discretionary. The scheme's trustees or provider decide who receives the lump sum, not the will and not the intestacy rules. That is also what usually keeps the payment outside the estate for inheritance tax. | Ask the scheme what expression of wish it holds, and when it was last updated. |
| An expression of wish naming you | Possibly — at someone's discretion | A nomination lets the member name who they would like to receive the benefit, including a cohabiting partner. Trustees are not legally bound by it — but they follow it in the large majority of cases. | The scheme holds the form. It is the single most useful thing to ask for. |
| No nomination on file, or one naming a former partner | No | With nothing on file, or an out-of-date form, an unmarried partner has no guaranteed route to the money — trustees may instead pay a spouse, children, or other dependants they identify. | The scheme. An out-of-date nomination is worse than none. |
| Life insurance written in trust, or with a named beneficiary | Yes — automatically | The money is paid directly to that person — which can be an unmarried partner — and falls outside the estate, so it is unaffected by the absence of a will or by the intestacy rules. | The policy documents, or the insurer. Ask whether the policy is in trust. |
| Life insurance with no trust and no nomination | No | Proceeds are simply paid into the estate and then follow the will or the intestacy rules — so a cohabitant does not benefit unless named in a valid will. | The insurer. |
Read the middle column, not the second one. Nothing in this table turns on how long you were together or on anyone's view of the relationship. Each row turns on a document: a title register, an account mandate, a nomination form, a trust deed. Those documents are findable, and they are findable now. Where a row says the decision belongs to trustees, the useful question is not whether you are entitled — you are not — but what is on file, and whether it names you.
The joint-account row is the one point on this page that has no single GOV.UK page behind it: the right of survivorship on a UK joint account is long-established property and banking law rather than a published government rule, and GOV.UK's joint-ownership guidance is written around land, not bank accounts. Confirm how any particular account was held with the bank rather than assuming.
Registering the death — you can do this yourself
Since 9 September 2024, an unmarried partner is a qualified informant in their own right. This is recent, and most guidance still online predates it. Sections s.16 BDRA 1953 and s.17 BDRA 1953 of the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953 were amended to add “partner” alongside “relative” as a category of person who may register a death. You no longer have to reach for one of the older workaround routes — being present at the death, being the occupier of the house, being the person arranging the funeral.
How the Act defines “partner”.
s.41 BDRA 1953: a person is the partner of a deceased person if the two of them “(whether of different sexes or the same sex) were living as partners in an enduring relationship at the time of the deceased person's death”. No minimum duration is specified for this purpose — unlike the two-year tests used elsewhere in cohabitant law, which §IV covers.
The death must be registered within 5 days of the relevant date — broadly, when the cause of death is confirmed. GOV.UK's own register-a-death service branches by nation and by where the death happened before it shows the informant list, which is part of why the statutory wording above is worth having.
If for any reason the partner route does not apply, s.16 runs down its list in order. Relatives of the deceased share the first two categories with a partner — a relative present at the death or in attendance during the last illness, or one resident in the sub-district — and rank ahead of everything below. After them come:
Any personal representative of the deceased.
Any person present at the death.
The occupier of the house or institution.
If they are aware of the death.
Any inmate of the house.
If they are aware of the death.
The person causing the body's disposal.
The person arranging the funeral — not the funeral director acting in that capacity.
Registering the death is not the same as administering the estate.
They are separate things under separate statutes. Being the person who registers the death does not put you on the intestacy list, does not give you a share of the estate, and does not make you the person who deals with it. That is why this page does not sell you an executor's product — the person administering an intestate estate is very often not the surviving partner.
What a surviving cohabitant can actually do
There is one route into the estate, and it is a court application rather than an entitlement. The Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975 lets certain people ask the court for reasonable financial provision from an estate. A cohabitant was added to the categories that can apply for deaths on or after 1 January 1996 — but the category has a test, and the application has a clock.
A cohabitant is judged against the narrower of the Act's two tests. For any applicant who is not a surviving spouse or civil partner, the Act defines reasonable financial provision as “such financial provision as it would be reasonable in all the circumstances of the case for the applicant to receive for his maintenance” — the maintenance standard. A spouse or civil partner is judged against a broader one. That difference is the whole legal shape of the gap, expressed in a single subsection.
This one needs a solicitor, and it needs one early.
A 1975 Act application is contested litigation against an estate, on facts about your own household. It is not something to attempt from a web page, and Valoren does not act in claims — this page is information, not advice. The six-month clock is the reason to take advice early rather than late, because the grant of representation can be taken out without anyone telling you.
Bereavement Support Payment
Whether you qualify
The claim window
If someone else caused the death
Scotland is a different statute, with a different clock
Applies where the deceased was domiciled in Scotland
Scotland gives a surviving cohabitant a statutory route the rest of the page does not describe. s.29 FLSA 2006 — section 29 of the Family Law (Scotland) Act 2006 — lets a surviving cohabitant apply to the Sheriff Court or the Court of Session for a discretionary award of financial provision out of the estate. It is not automatic, and it is not the England and Wales route under a different name.
Only where there is no will
The Scottish route applies to intestate estates only. The England and Wales s.1 IPFDA 1975 route applies whether or not there was a will — a real difference, not a technicality.
Six months from the death
Six months from the date of death — not from the grant. The England and Wales clock runs from representation being taken out, so the two deadlines are not comparable.
A ceiling, set by the spouse's share
The court cannot award a cohabitant more than they would have received had they been the deceased's spouse or civil partner.
One change is pending and this page states the position as it stood on 17 August 2026. s.78 TSSA 2024 — section 78 of the Trusts and Succession (Scotland) Act 2024 — would extend the cohabitant window from six months to twelve. When this page was last checked against legislation.gov.uk it was marked not in force and had not been commenced. A Scottish Statutory Instrument can bring it into force with little notice. The same Act separately changes the spousal intestacy share, which is the notional ceiling above — its own commencement status is a separate question.
Confirm the current position with a Scottish solicitor before relying on either figure. Northern Ireland is not covered anywhere on this page: neither the England and Wales rules nor the Scottish ones can be assumed to apply there, and nothing above should be read across to it. Valoren's Scottish page covers the household side of the same question.
If you are reading this before anything has happened
Everything above is downstream of one document that was never made. Cohabiting couples are not short of commitment; they are short of paperwork that the law recognises. The gap closes with a small number of specific instruments, and none of them requires anyone to get married.
A will.
The only instrument that puts a cohabiting partner into the estate at all. Without one the intestacy order runs, and that order has no line for a partner — which is the entire subject of §I. The wills door sets out what Valoren does here.
The nomination forms — the ones that decide money a will never touches.
The pension expression of wish, and whether the life policy is written in trust or carries a named beneficiary. Trustees follow a nomination in the large majority of cases; a form naming a former partner is worse than no form at all. §II's table is the checklist.
How the house is held.
Joint tenants or tenants in common is a decision that was made once, possibly by a conveyancer, possibly years ago — and it decides the house. An official copy of the register settles it in an afternoon.
A letter of wishes, and one person who knows where everything is.
The will is the instrument; the letter of wishes is the note that sits alongside it and says, in your own words, why. Then a named trusted person who knows where the will, the policy, the pension scheme and the title actually are — because §II's table is only useful to someone who can find the documents.
If you want the household side of this held in one place rather than reconstructed later, the Household Continuity Dossier is the subscription that keeps it current — £195 for the first year, then £99/yr. The £29 Family Handover Kit is the one-off version: a finished, printable brief within one business day, no subscription and no account. Everything Valoren produces is digital — prepared for you to read on screen or print at home. The £29 counts in full toward the Dossier’s first year if you move up within 30 days — nothing you start with is wasted.
The questions people actually type.
Scoped to England and Wales unless a question says otherwise; Scotland is covered in §V and Northern Ireland is not covered. Checked against GOV.UK and legislation.gov.uk on 17 August 2026. This page is information about how the rules work, not advice on your situation — for a claim, or for anything turning on your own facts, take advice from a solicitor.
Two different visitors reach this page, and they need opposite things.
One of them has just lost someone and needs the next hour to make sense. The other has just realised, reading this, that their own household has the same gap in it — and has the enormous advantage of time.
What to do when someone dies
The practical sequence for the first days and weeks — registration, notification, and what genuinely has to happen in what order. No account required.
Open the guide→Reading aheadA will is the only thing that closes this gap
The instrument that puts a partner into the estate at all. What Valoren does, and what it costs, set out plainly.
See the wills door→The Family Handover Kit · £29 one-offA finished brief within one business day
A printable brief on where your household actually stands — prepared for you, no subscription, no account.
See the brief→