Make your will to your spouse or parents?

[tuggy]

Hello, me and my boyfriend have been wondering what the most common way of writing a will is in our situation

If you are married do you, as soon as you get married, change your will from all going to your parents (as current next of kin) to all going to your spouse.

I ask because me and my boyfriend both own our own homes (since before we met)

Obviously in our wills if we married anything we had jointly gained together would be left to the other one. However... say I own my home before I marry him, and then a year into our marriage I die. My house that I got with my own hard work would go to him, and he still being young would most likely re-marry, have kids with someone else and effectively all that I worked so hard to get (before I met him and that has nothing to do with him) benefits some other new family.

However if it goes to my parents it helps them and is still in the family. Then they can leave any thing that is left to my sister.

Obviously if me and bfriend had children it would ALL go to him, no questions, as it would be benefiting my children

We have both discussed this and are genuinely curious as to what other people would do? Hope my reasoning wasnt too confusing. Dont flame me as being mean to bfriend and obviously dont love him etc etc, as bfriend ALSO isnt sure what it right, and he also owns a flat.

We arent engaged yet, it was just a discussion. However we would hope to get married within a few years

If you're married, then he is your family. I don't really see the problem with him "benefiting from your hard work". Presumably if you get married then you will either sell both houses to buy a new one, or will move into one house which will then become a joint possession and either sell or rent the other one, splitting the proceeds?

how odd.

Are you planning on living separately when your married or will you be moving in to his house, or him in to yours or selling both and buying something new?

If he will be living in your house, you expect him to deal with the pain of losing the woman he planned to live his whole life with, and packing up his stuff to move home? Or sorting out the finances to buy your parents out?

Or if you move into a new house, that would be the same, just he'd have to only find the money to buy out half his home, or face buying something new rather still having his property to move to.

Or if you move into his, you'd execpt to live in a house he worked hard for before you met and therefore get the benefit of sharing his hard work, but him not having a share in yours. Of course if he died, I'm assuming you'd then be out on your ear and having to leave your matrital home while dealing with his death.

And I'm sure he could contest the will anyway. Which would leave a nice relationship with your parents.

And if you leave a house to your future DCs rather than your DH, do you not think he might need that extra money if you were to die to help raise them? I'm thinking he would either need to not work full time (and so might need the money to maintain a standard of living for them) or pay for a full time nanny/housekeeper. You would probably be downgrading the quality of life for your DC's in their childhood so they could avoid having to put in as much 'hard work' as you in order to get their first house deposit.

And he might divorce you before you die. Perhaps if you don't see each other as a full couple (wanting to keep your finances separate) a pre-nup might be more urgent than a will.

When you marry, he is your family and is your next of kin, not your parents. IMHO he should come first in the pecking order for any assets in your will. It doesn't matter if he later remarries and someone else benefits - he is your spouse and you should be thinking about his immediate needs after your death. Your parents could just as easily split up, or one remarry after the death of another, and your assets would also end up in another family. There's no guarantee over what people do with your assets after your death, be it your DH or your parents.

You are way overthinking this. If you want to marry him, you should want him to share in what you have and if you died then you should want to limit the financial hardship and emotional upheaval he faces. As you both own properties it's not like you are worried about one being a golddigger - you come to the marriage as broad equals.

The only exception I could see is if you inherited some kind of important family heirloom that really should stay in your family. My friend signed a prenup with her DH purely because there were some particular heirlooms that he had inherited (paintings of ancestors!) that he and his family really wanted to be kept in his family and they meant nothing to her. The prenup only covered what would happen if they divorced or he died if they didn't have children - now they do these heirlooms will naturally pass onto their children.

Message deleted

We aren't moving into either property we are both renting out our flats and lving in a third house together. (much better financially) Im inclined to agree with everyone on here, we were just having a hypothetical convo about it wondering what others did in our situation we read the replies and have agreed that if (when) we get married we will leave the flats to each other.

Just because you have children together doesn't mean they would continue to benefit if you left it all to him - he could remarry and leave it to someone else. So you could leave it all to the children and make him a trustee of their interest. Or even give him a life interest which means he would have the benefit of the property / money while he was alive but could not leave it in a will to someone else (e.g. if he remarried).