What happens if you die without a will in the UK?

Who inherits when there is no will in England and Wales

Dying without a will is dying intestate, and section 46 of the Administration of Estates Act 1925 decides who takes what. Nobody further down takes anything while a person above them survives. The shares in their present form apply to deaths from 1 October 2014, when the spouse’s old life interest became an outright share.

One rule bites before the order does. A husband, wife or civil partner who dies within 28 days of the death is treated as not having survived at all.

The £322,000 fixed net sum and the half share

With no children or remoter descendants, a surviving spouse or civil partner takes the whole residuary estate absolutely. Where there are children, it splits three ways.

Part of the estate	Spouse or civil partner	Children
Personal chattels	All	None
First £322,000, plus interest	All	None
The remainder	Half, absolutely	Half, on the statutory trusts

Personal chattels are tangible movable property under section 55, leaving out money and securities, business assets and anything held solely as an investment.

The £322,000 comes from article 2 of the Fixed Net Sum Order 2023, in force from 26 July 2023, and what applies is the figure in force at the date of death rather than at the grant. Schedule 1A forces a fresh order within five years of the last, and within 21 days of a consumer prices index figure landing more than 15% above the base month. Interest runs on the sum at the Bank of England rate on the day of death.

The children’s half sits on the statutory trusts in section 47, so a child takes at 18, and the children of a child who died first divide their parent’s share.

The order of relatives after the spouse

With no spouse or civil partner surviving those 28 days, the estate runs down this list until someone is found. Everyone at a level shares equally, and a level is reached only once the one above is empty.

1. Children, and the issue of a child who died first
2. Parents
3. Brothers and sisters of the whole blood, and their issue
4. Brothers and sisters of the half blood, and their issue
5. Grandparents, in equal shares
6. Uncles and aunts of the whole blood, and their issue
7. Uncles and aunts of the half blood, and their issue

Who the intestacy rules leave out

The statutory list is of relatives only, so everyone else falls outside it.

• Unmarried partners. gov.uk states that a partner who was not the husband, wife or civil partner cannot apply for probate, and section 46 gives them no share.
• Stepchildren. Legally adopted children count. Stepchildren do not.
• Carers and friends. No share, at any length of service.
• A separated husband or wife. Separation does not end a marriage, so a separated spouse still inherits. The exception is a judicial separation order in force and continuing, which makes the estate devolve as if the other party had died.

None of it is fixable afterwards except by agreement or a court claim. Levi Solicitors in Leeds publishes single wills from £350 plus VAT and mirror wills from £500 plus VAT on the cards in the Leeds list.

Letters of administration, who can apply and the £526 fee

With no will there is no executor, so nobody has authority until the court grants it. The document is a grant of letters of administration, its holder is the administrator, and the work an executor does is the same either way.

Rule 22 of the Non-Contentious Probate Rules 1987 sets who may apply, in the same order as the inheritance, and only someone with a beneficial interest qualifies. Where nobody does, the Treasury Solicitor takes the grant on a bona vacantia claim, and a creditor may apply once everyone entitled is cleared off.

Section 114 of the Senior Courts Act 1981 caps a grant at four people and normally requires a trust corporation or at least two individuals where a beneficiary is a minor, and form PA16 records a spouse giving up the right to administer where the deceased left children.

The fee is £526 where the estate is assessed above £5,000 and nothing at or below it. Inheritance tax runs on its own clock, due by the end of the sixth month after the death.

How long letters of administration take, 10.5 weeks against 5.0 for probate

Intestacy is not rare. Of the 81,069 grant applications made in England and Wales from January to March 2026, 13,615 were for letters of administration, roughly one in six.

Grant type	Mean weeks, application to issue, January to March 2026
Probate, where there is a will	5.0
Letters of administration	10.5
Letters of administration with will annexed	20.4
All grants	6.4

Most of that gap is paper rather than law. Letters of administration took a mean of 5.1 weeks filed digitally and 15.6 weeks on paper, and only 6,173 of the 13,615 applications were digital. An estate with no will is not on the probate timetable most families are quoted.

Deeds of variation and 1975 Act claims

Two routes exist afterwards, both on a clock.

A variation is a written agreement among the people the rules gave the estate to. Section 142 of the Inheritance Tax Act 1984 covers dispositions made under the law relating to intestacy, so the estate can be redirected within two years of the death, taxed as though the deceased had made the change. Every beneficiary left worse off has to agree. No formal deed is needed and a letter will do, though HMRC gets a copy within six months where more inheritance tax becomes payable.

The Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975 is the court route for someone the rules left out. A cohabitant qualifies only by having lived in the same household as if married or civil partners for the two years ending immediately before the death, and for anyone but a spouse the standard is maintenance rather than a share. The six-month limit runs from representation being first taken out rather than from the death, and after it the court’s permission is needed.

Bona vacantia, the Crown and the 5,484 unclaimed estates

Where nobody in section 46’s list survives, the estate goes to the Crown, the Duchy of Lancaster or the Duke of Cornwall as bona vacantia.

The Government Legal Department handles England and Wales estates worth £500 or more, outside the two Duchies. Its unclaimed estates list held 5,484 entries on 7 September 2026, 2,121 of them recording a death before 2007 and the oldest from 1974. A cohabiting partner or unpaid carer, not being a relative, can apply for a discretionary grant out of the estate.

Intestacy in Scotland, prior rights then legal rights

Scotland does not run one list of relatives from the top. Under the Succession (Scotland) Act 1964 the estate is worked in three stages after the debts, which are prior rights, then legal rights, then the free estate. Prior rights belong to a surviving spouse or civil partner alone.

Prior right	Limit
The dwelling house the survivor lived in, or its value if worth more	£473,000
Furniture and plenishings	£29,000
Cash, where there are children or their descendants	£50,000
Cash, where there are none	£89,000

Those figures come from the Prior Rights Order 2011, in force since 1 February 2012.

Legal rights come next, out of the net moveable estate left after prior rights and never out of land and buildings. A spouse takes one third where there are children and one half where there are none; the children take one third where a spouse survives and one half where none does.

The free estate is what survives both stages. Section 2(1) runs children, then the spouse or civil partner, then parents and siblings, then uncles and aunts, then grandparents, putting uncles and aunts above grandparents, the reverse of England and Wales. The spouse’s place there was only inserted by section 77 of the Trusts and Succession (Scotland) Act 2024 from 30 April 2024, and an earlier death does not get it.

The document is confirmation, not probate, applied for at the sheriff court on form C1. A small estate is £36,000 or less and the sheriff clerk prepares its inventory, while the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service cannot assist on anything larger. Above that line and with no will there is an extra dative petition to appoint an executor at £23, plus a bond of caution in some cases, and the inventory fee runs nothing up to £50,000, £351 up to £250,000 and £705 above.

A cohabitant can apply under section 29 of the Family Law (Scotland) Act 2006, only on an intestacy, capped at a spouse’s share and within six months of the death rather than of the grant. The regulator is the Law Society of Scotland, service complaints go to the Scottish Legal Complaints Commission, and unclaimed estates fall to the Crown as ultimus haeres through the King’s and Lord Treasurer’s Remembrancer.

Intestacy in Northern Ireland under the 1955 Act

Northern Ireland runs on the Administration of Estates Act (Northern Ireland) 1955, not the 1925 Act, with its own money figures.

Who else survives	What the spouse or civil partner takes
One child	Chattels, £250,000 with interest, and half the residue
More than one child	Chattels, £250,000 with interest, and a third of the residue
No children, but a parent or sibling	Chattels, £450,000 with interest, and half the residue
No children, parents or siblings	The whole estate

Both figures in section 7 were set with effect from 1 January 2008 and have not moved since, with no consumer prices index trigger of the kind England and Wales has, only a power to make a further order. The 28-day survivorship rule applies here too.

Below the spouse the order is issue, then parents, then brothers and sisters and their issue. Instead of a grandparents and uncles ladder, the estate then divides among the next of kin by degrees of blood relationship, with representation only for the issue of siblings and of uncles and aunts.

The document is a grant of letters of administration from the Probate Office of the High Court, and nidirect publishes the order relatives apply in, up to four together. There is no fee up to £10,000, £326 above that from 1 April 2026, plus £81 for a personal applicant. An unmarried partner claims instead under the 1979 Order on provision for family and dependants, within six months of the grant and showing they were maintained wholly or partly by the deceased. The regulator is the Law Society of Northern Ireland, and unclaimed estates pass to the Crown through the Crown Solicitor’s Office.