Another wills one…

I would definitely look to add something like this. An ageing parent in a house that's rapidly becoming too much for them, without the capital to afford something more suitable due to owning only half is a tremendous pain in the arse.

In my opinion OP, what you want to do is perfectly normal and understandable. My DH and I have done the same thing, because as other's have said, many men do end up re-married, and the last thing I would want, is for some other woman to get her hands on my hard earned cash, and then end up leaving it to her own kids, while leaving mine out in the cold. No one is ever going to look after your children in the way that you would, you gave birth to them after all. So, I would make sure that your home (assuming you own it) is registered as 'Tenants in Common', and then just make your own Will, you don't have to tell your DH what's in it, if you think he'll kick off, as at the end of the day, it's your money and he isn't entitled to have a say in who you leave it to.

I agree. DH and I have decided to do this in later life - we’ll rewrite the will anyway when the kids are both over 18. But it’s a mutual
decision to do with care… not potential and hypothetical distrust of a future partner

🙄 you pay inheritance tax on amounts ABOVE the threshold not the whole thing. So if you are amongst the privileged 4.72% who pay any IHT its only a small fraction of the total. Entirely fair IMHO and well worth it to secure your privileged childrens future, surely.

All this talk of mirror wills. They mean nothing. As soon as the first parent has died, there is nothing stopping the surviving parent from changing their will. If you want your children to inherit, write it into the will.

My DH is from an EU, Napoleonic law, country, and we live in another EU country with the same regime, so our DS is protected. In the UK, our house (which is in DH name) is left to our DS, with myself having the right to live in it, unless I remarry. I can also sell it and buy a smaller property but again only in trust for DS. I am totally fine with this.

My own UK will leaves everything to DS. DH has properties back in his home country and doesn’t need my money.

Wills and estates lawyer here - I would seek legal advice because you can put your share of the house into a life interest trust for DH. Means he can live in the property but your half isn’t his and on his death it passes according to the terms of your Will, not his. This is very very common and a good lawyer can talk you through proper structuring that will give DH security in his living arrangements and you comfort in providing for your kids.

As others have said, you will need to severe the joint tenancy into tenants in common if you haven’t already.

People are getting confused between mutual Wills and mirror Wills. Mutual Wills are specific instruments where the terms of one persons Will cannot be changed after the death of the other person. They’re a pain in the arse and no decent advisor would ever recommend them. They only exist because English law is so old we have all sorts of hangover bits of law from back in the day.

Mirror Wills means that your Wills are on the same terms (e.g. leave everything to surviving spouse on first death, kids on second death) but as you say, nothing stops the other person from changing their Will at any time and leaving their estate to the cats home or the tennis instructor.

Also I want to clarify - the life interest trust would only exist when you die, it is created by your Will. DO NOT fall for those schemes where you put your home into trust during your lifetime to avoid inheritance tax or care home fees, please please don’t 🙏

@graygoosesorry to be stupid but why wouldn’t you put your house into trust to avoid care home fees thank you

Not stupid at all! Basically it doesn’t avoid care home fees, local authorities essential disregard arrangements that are a deliberate deprivation of assets. Also shoving your property into a trust while you continue to live in it rent free doesn’t alienate you from the property enough for tax purposes. I could go on, there are myriad reasons this doesn’t work and imo these schemes are predatory and only make the “advisors” who peddle them fat fees whilst leaving the clients and their families in a complete mess.

OP, you are quite right to want to fool proof your will, and here's why: My auntie and uncle were married for over fifty years. She died suddenly and in a very short space of time my uncle had taken up with a local dog walker. He then got cancer and died within three years. In the meantime, he'd changed his will and left nothing to his children and everything to the dog walker. What a betrayal to my auntie's memory and the children.
I have no idea if my cousins contested the will as we lost touch, but I really hope they did.

I actually raised this with my DH yesterday and said the same as you OP, I trust him but not his future partner/wife if I die first. I am going to see a solicitor and set up mirror wills alongside a life interest Trust for my half to go to my children (he doesn't have any but we have been together over 20 years). I am aware local authorities can overturn these trusts if they think they are done to avoid care home fees bit surely in blended families, that is not the case, I just don't want my children cut out.

It's not about not trusting your husband, it's about future proofing against various scenarios. We might imagine that the first thing our husband would do on remarrying is update his will, but he probably won't. He might trust his wife just the way we trusted him. Something terrible might happen, or he may just change his priorities. So many men remarry really quickly after their wives die. Does that suggest that their top priority is their kids? For so many their new priority is their new wife. I am good within my marriage and family for everything to be 'ours'. Outside of that, I am not okay with anything I worked hard for to be inherited by anyone other than my family.

I think you can check online. My brother did to have a nose at my dad's will

I did, some years after. No will online.

@Dontasksillyquestions my dh was similarly put out when I raised the same issue with him. We had several interesting (and occasionally heated) discussions.

However, he changed his mind when his Mum died. She'd often said that all she wanted was for her children to have some of her money. But that's not what her will said. She and dh's step dad had mirror wills leaving their estate to each other, and then subsequently to dh and his siblings (MIL and step FIL had been together for 20 years, he had no previous dc).

When MIL died, dh's stepdad duly inherited, his dementia worsened and he quickly moved into a care home. Physically very healthy and could live for years. He's already been there for 4 years. There is almost no money left, possibly enough for another 15 months, then it will all be gone.

We are now tenants in common and have a life interest trust (as described above), so if we were in a similar situation to MIL and FIL, at least there would be some inheritance, eventually, for our dc.

I trust my husband right now

I wouldn’t trust anyone my husband remarried to

my willgive my husband to live in my house ( lifetime interest trust )

most of my money is going to my son

People change their minds.
After my mother died, my father was bereft. Through his tears he said he would never remarry. Mum died intestate and the rules where we lived meant I inherited half her estate, which my father had me pass to him on the basis he would leave it to me on his death.
Within a year he was engaged, married soon after. He left his second wife everything. She'll be leaving it to her godson.

This is nearly right.

Yes, you can leave assets to a spouse free of IHT.
Yes, you can transfer your tax free IHT allowance to a spouse.
But, you can also use it now. And, given that assets tend to appreciate in value faster than the tax free allowance goes up, it makes sense to leave assets up to the value of the tax free allowance to your children when you die and the rest to a spouse. This assumes that the spouse would be left with enough to live on if you leave assets direct to your children.

We currently have an issue in my family involving mirror wills where struggling young adult children will get nothing from either parents’ estates because a step parent manipulated a surviving parent when they were vulnerable and inherited the lot, then changed their will to leave it all to their children from a previous marriage.

I trust my DH completely, but I do not trust anyone who might see an opportunity when he is elderly and vulnerable. I am absolutely leaving a proportion of my assets directly to my children.

I have done exactly what you propose. My husband will have a life interest in my half of the house.

In practice as he is 10 years older than I am it’s unlikely to be an issue, but my main concern is protecting the children.

This doesn’t sort the problem. You have still left everything your husband. He can then change his will. I don’t understand why people think mirror wills alone help. They aren’t static documents

This sounds sensible

I think some posters are being a little simplistic.

What happens if the remaining spouse needs to downsize? Or if they become estranged from the DC?

Also, it’s all well and good saying you don’t want your half used to fund care home fees, but have you actually seen what a council funded place gets you? Where I live these places are dire. I’d actually want the money used to pay for somewhere nice.

I wonder where is best to get advice about this sort of thing in Scotland, I think the laws are different here?

Sorry OP but I think you’re weird! DW and I have mirror wills where the other inherits the lot and I trust DW absolutely to look after our children in every way in the event of my death! And vice Versa.