Death without a will and co habitation

[RonaldMcDonald]

What happens nowadays if you die without having made a will and you were co habiting?
This has happened to my friend.
He has made financial provision for his children but has made no new will since he started to co habit with his new girlfriend
She says that she gets 2/3s of the money and the children the rest split between them
Sounds a bit unfair as his kids are young

Any ideas? She has called the insurance co to tell them she is the next of kin.
Help if poss would be v gratefully received
Ta

As a probate lawyer I have to say that I am very surprised that the insurance company has not asked to see the will. In every case that I have dealt with where there has not been a valid nomination in place the company have used the will as a starting point in their decision making process.
I would also add that the decision making process is usually a long one especially if there are competing claims as in this situation.
I have a case at the moment where the deceased died in Jan and the claim still has not been settled. The amount in question is very small, less than a thousand pounds, but the insurers are taking their time due to the conflicting claims ( ex-wife from whom separated but not divorced versus parents who were nominees).
My point is that this is unlikely to be resolved quickly and I would find it hugely unlikely thst GF would have been given any concrete info ovet phone and definitely no decision as to splits.

Yes the 1975 Act is there but only if he supported her and only if she makes some kind of claim, whereas if she is an adult with a job not a dependent non earning concubine type person she might well not have a claim under it. It is not as if they have children. The Act does not give her a right to be an executor although it is certainly possible he nominated her at work as the recipient of his life insurance money with the children too.

Any mumsnetters thinking the 1975 act means if they are unmarried they do not need to worry about how they will stand financially though should not assume that. They should make sure wills etc are in place. Eg many of us would not want a penny going to our partner and instead all to the children where we have had a first long marriage and no children with a new partner. There is nothing wrong with that stance and indeed it may have been the views of this man which is why his girl friend is not in his will and his children need looking after whereas his girlfriend he met later in life is a big girl who can work to support herself.

I understood that he had taken out this insurance policy before he met the gf. And that there are no nominees anyway.

There has been a funeral. It was suitably wonderful and dreadful, as it should be. It seems insane that we are where we are now.
This was before all of this transpired...well some of the cards had been dealt by the GF but hadn't been looked at iyswim

The insurance co want a copy of the will. The GF seems to have been somewhat ? in her information from/with the insurance company
They have been clear that their decision isn't necessarily based upon his will or even his nominations had he made them
They seem a little cloudy over whether he did or did not make a nomination. I have asked that Q directly and they have not said no but have said that they are unable to clarify that atm but that it might not form the basis of their decision.
They clarified that it would not have been a recent nomination.

Anyway his will is actually very clear and strongly worded.

Weirdly his ex had sent him an email a few yrs ago reminding him about the will etc as she hadn't amended hers and was joking around that he was a rich man were she to die. Emails back and forth laughing about it all. So he was aware of the will and what it still stood for

Blardy horrible all around, thanks for your help

Sorry for your loss. Hopefully it can all be resolved with no bitterness or anger.

How long had he been with the new girlfriend?

Op does your friend have any of those emails still as they might be useful in backing up any claims that her ex knew exactly what he was doing in not creating a new will. Obviously only to be used if they do actively say what you need them to say!!

With the gf over two years. I really do feel for her and for them all. What a blinking mess.
She does have the emails as I've seen them
They are weird and creepy given this situation but funny in the other context. They did a fab job of remaining friends whilst parenting

I would feel for her in that she's lost her partner. But you also need to remember she was trying to do his children out of the provision their father had made for them! And has lied made up the rules ever since about the legalities of the situation. She clearly has absolutely no idea about the law - asking you to step aside as executor and let her do it, for a start. That's simply not allowed.

But I agree. It's a mess.

It's true that company death-in-service benefit providers have no obligation to follow the will - because they have complete discretion, their payout is not subject to Inheritance Tax which is a very good thing.

It sounds to me like it will all work out OK - she gets the lions share of the separate payout, which is fair enough as she has just lost her partner. The mother of his children gets the majority of the estate which is right and proper too.

I agree with what FishonaBicycle said. DH helps manage a large fund and they have discretion over how money is distributed. It's definitely independent of wills. Apparently they get lots of interesting situations not that he will tell me about them

Sorry, I meant FishWithABicycle

I don't think that sounds fair enough at all. She is an independent adult, with her own house and business - she can provide for herself. His children can't.
And anyway, didn't the Op say at one point that the insurance pay-out forms the bulk of his estate? So that wouldn't be a fair distribution.

Glad the funeral went well Ronald Doubly glad that the insurance company knows that there is a will and will be taking it into consideration! You've done what you needed to, and everyone who needs the info has it - I reckon you can rest easy. Keep us updated!

So how do death in service providers make decisions? When db died his gf took care of everything and i thought if anything was to be passed on she would let us know. What if she didn't? How would the provider know who deserved the payout if she was the only person communicating with them? His ex, who also had a child by him and got scant support through his life, didn't receive anything afaik.

I agree with clam - I don't think it is particularly fair because the OP did say that the insurance policy does make up the lion's share of what he has left behind. And as it was set up before he even met his gf, in order to support his children (and I assume his ex in order for her to support his children) then it's incredibly unreasonable for her to expect to have the lions share of policy - and I would have thought that if that ended up being the case, the ex or executor or solicitor or whoever is appropriate would have a reasonable case to take it to appeal if it meant his children got very little.

Fingers crossed that it all works out Ok for the children in the end...

Interesting to hear that the funeral has been and gone - glad that it was a 'good' one, but it sounds like neither you nor the other executors were involved. Not that you'd necessarily want to be organising it, but if the gf did it, then it shows that somewhere along the line there is a breakdown in the process if the gf can organise it without at least the executors say so (I guess in case there is stuff in the will that specifies what they would like at their funeral). An indicator of what was to come

And if the gf thought of herself as his wife, then surely she should be thinking of the dc as her stepchildren and thus want to help them rather than want to take as much of their inheritance as she can!

unrealhousewife

Well...it now seems..from what the insurance co said today... that if your brother had death in benefit or a large pension or whatever that the trustees should have been aware of or made aware of anyone who might have been seen to be his dependants
So his gf perhaps and any children under 23. There would have been other people who could have also asked to be considered. They then make decisions based on what they have to go on.

So apparently in my friend's case. He didn't change his will and was aware that it paid out in favour of his children when he died but expected that this pension pot would of course make up part of his estate upon his death...it was explained to him at the time that having it like this was like clever tax planning
In the interim his estate has diminished rapidly so that tbh the majority of his monetary leavings are the policy funds
The company can't put their hands on his nomination form from then and are looking
They don't consider his wishes in the will
But even if they found his old nomination as he now lives with a gf, which by dint apparently makes her his dependant and puts her needs on a greater standing than his children.

So strange and not as straightforward as anyone seems to think. I thought a will was pretty straightforward. We all did.
Learning differently now

But surely just living with someone doesn't make you their dependant? And more so than the children?

How can an adult with no children be more dependent than a child?

It's awful if that is the case OP - both that they have lost the nomination form and that they seem 'happy' to let the children lose out vs a girlfriend who is capable of supporting herself! I hope that you manage to persuade them to see the error of their ways...

I dunno

These are the 'rules' that they take into consideration
Seems weird to me tbh but I suppose it has helped them to pay out in situations where someone has died intestate whilst living with someone...for instance if the deceased's parents were considered next of kin and got the money in the estate and the gf as the person who lived with him got the money in the trust. Dyswim??

I just hope it ends up okay
Sorry to hear about your brother

The thing to do is to keep your cool but be armed with knowledge and not be afraid to ask questions.

It is very difficult but I can imagine that some people do take advantage of other people's grief and tears.

That just doesn't sound right to me. How do the insurance company know she is his girlfriend and not just a flatmate??

How can the insurance company have lost the nomination form? That sounds negligent. The advice you were given earlier in this thread to get a lawyer ASAP sounds even more important, so the children's interests can be protected.

Also why has his estate diminished so much recently? And do you have independent info on that or just the girlfriend's word?

You're going to have to get a lawyer. This is crazy.

This is interesting. First most of the money is the insurance pay out (not what he had in the bank etc) so in that sense the will is pretty irrelevant although it may show his dependants (his children) and his intentions in relation to them. So in terms of where most of the money is it is nothing much to do with his will it is about what rights an insurance company has to hand out money available for dependants.
I am also interested that some posters think a huge great adult who can earn her own living who has only been with her lover 2 years, whose lover chose not to put her in the will and who may not be dependant on him not even in the sense of being able to claim under the 1975 Act is entitled just because she gave him some love for 2 years to the bulk of his estate leaving his dependant children nothing! When will we get away from this mental attitude that adults do not support themselves and their male partner keeps them.