You can’t move these days without tripping over an advert for “Find your ancestors!” or “Discover your Viking roots for just £89.99!” — and thanks to all those home DNA kits, family secrets aren’t quite as secret as they used to be.
So it’s probably no surprise that more and more people are finding themselves caught up in family estate dramas — missing wills, surprise half-siblings, and long-lost cousins who appear just as the house sale completes.
And as accountants, advisers, executors, or just the poor souls left to deal with it all, we’re often the ones asked:
- “Where’s the will?”
- “What happens if there isn’t one?”
- “Are we even allowed to give out the money yet?”
This month, we’re diving into the fascinating (and occasionally chaotic) world of what happens when a person dies without a clear paper trail — or when the will that’s meant to make life easy, well… doesn’t.
Why this matters
People assume that when they die, everything will automatically “sort itself out.”
It doesn’t.
In fact, when there’s no will or a missing will, it’s a legal and emotional minefield — and the people left behind are the ones who have to navigate it.
The three big problems we see over and over again are:
- Nobody can find the will. It was “done properly years ago,” but nobody knows where it went.
- There was never a will in the first place.
- Someone turns up later — often armed with a birth certificate or DNA match — saying, “I think I’m related…”
Each of these situations can completely change who inherits and how, and if you’re the one dealing with the estate, you’re legally responsible for getting it right. (No pressure, then.)
1. When the Will’s Gone Walkabout
The first (and most common) problem. The person definitely made a will. A proper one. With witnesses and everything. But nobody can find it.
Sometimes it’s in a solicitor’s strongroom, sometimes in a bank safe, and sometimes in the biscuit tin marked “old receipts and things to keep.”
Occasionally it was never registered anywhere — because wills don’t have to be — so it becomes a guessing game of which firm wrote it 25 years ago and whether that firm still exists
Click here for our deeper dive into “The Case of the Missing Will” — how to trace one, who to contact, and how to avoid a family version of The Crystal Maze.
2. When There Was Never a Will
If there’s no will, the law steps in with its own version of “fairness” — a set of rules written by people who clearly never met your family.
Spouses, children, parents, siblings… there’s a strict pecking order, and unmarried partners don’t even make the list.
This can lead to some fairly brutal real-world results — like the partner of 20 years being told to pack up and move out because the house wasn’t in their name.
If you die without a will, the law steps in with its own plan — and spoiler alert: it’s not always what you’d want. Unmarried partners? Out. Stepchildren? Ignored. Exes? Occasionally back in the mix. Welcome to the Rules of Intestacy — a system that proves life after death can still be complicated.
Click here for “When There’s No Will: The Great British Guessing Game” — our guide to what really happens under the Rules of Intestacy.
3. The Trickle-Down Test
When the law starts dividing an estate, it doesn’t hand out cheques at random — it works down a family tree like water running downhill.
If a child has died, their share trickles down to their own children, and so on. That’s straightforward until you realise how many branches of the family might exist — especially now that “23andMe” is outing surprise relatives faster than Christmas arguments do.
Inheritance under intestacy sounds simple: it goes “to the next of kin.” But who’s that, exactly? And what happens when DNA databases start turning up half-siblings nobody knew about? Welcome to the trickle-down effect — where the law decides who inherits, and Ancestry.com provides the plot twists.
Click here for “The Trickle-Down Explained” — a plain-English guide to how the inheritance hierarchy really works, with examples that won’t make your head spin.
4. When You’re the One Left Sorting It Out
If you’re the poor relative who’s just discovered you’re responsible for “sorting the estate,” congratulations — you’ve inherited paperwork, stress, and potential liability.
Without a will, you’ll need to apply for Letters of Administration, make reasonable enquiries to find all possible heirs, and (most importantly) protect yourself in case someone pops up years later claiming a share.
That protection usually means:
- Publishing Section 27 Notices in The Gazette and local paper,
- Possibly using a genealogist or “heir hunter” to map out the family tree,
- And, for bigger estates, taking out Missing Beneficiary Insurance — just in case an unexpected DNA match comes knocking.
Click here for “The Administrator’s Survival Guide” — what to do, what to avoid, and how not to end up personally footing the bill if Cousin Kevin turns up five years later.
A Final Thought
For something so certain, death causes an awful lot of uncertainty.
And as DNA testing becomes dinner-table conversation, the odds of long-lost relatives appearing after the event are only going up.
So if you’ve got elderly parents with “a will somewhere,” or your own documents stashed in a drawer marked “to sort later,” maybe it’s time to sort it now — while you can still remember which drawer it’s in.
Because dying without a plan doesn’t just leave a mess; it leaves an audience.
