What happens if one of your beneficiaries passes away at the same time or before you?

When you write a will, it reflects your circumstances and wishes at the time of writing. There are some things that you can anticipate will change over time, for example, if you know that your children are planning to have children themselves. However, there are also a lot of known unknowns, such as whether one of your beneficiaries might pass away before you or possibly at the same time, in case of a tragedy impacting multiple family members.

If one of your beneficiaries passes away before you, at the same time, or shortly after you pass away, their inheritance will fail. This means that the gift they were due to inherit remains within your residuary estate and is distributed to the surviving beneficiaries according to your wishes for your residuary estate.

However, this might not be what you want to happen. For example, if one of your children passes away before you who has children themselves, you may wish for those children to inherit their parents’ share of your estate.

In such cases, you can specify an alternate beneficiary in your will. This means that if the primary beneficiary passes away before you, the gift will be distributed to the alternate beneficiary. The alternative beneficiary could be defined as a class of beneficiaries, such as the children of the primary beneficiary, which means any inheritance is distributed evenly among anyone who qualifies to be part of that class. This can help to future-proof your will to accommodate unknown changes to the family.

Wills often include a survivorship clause, which is a provision in a will that states that a beneficiary must survive the testator by a certain amount of time, usually 30 days, in order to inherit the gift. This is intended to reduce the likelihood of the first estate passing through probate twice in quick succession, which can save time and legal costs. While these clauses are common, they can have negative effects on an estate. They can reduce the amount of inheritance that beneficiaries receive, as it may impact eligibility for IHT relief in a case where one spouse passes away shortly after the other one.

We generally do not include a survivorship clause in your will, with the exception of wills that involve couples who are neither married nor in a civil partnerships, and are therefore not eligible for transferrable IHT relief.