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Where does your half of the home go?
A will trust for a blended family, one step at a time. Choose how you own your home and which wills you make, then follow your half.
Choose your home and your wills
Your children are from an earlier relationship. Your spouse may have children of their own.
Where your half ends up
Mirror wills
With your spouse outright. Your children inherit it only if your spouse’s last will says so.
Tenants in common, with a trust
Held in trust while your spouse lives, then passed to your children.
Joint tenants, with a trust
With your spouse automatically. The trust in your will never receives it.
Follow your half
Today
Tenants in common
You own the home together, each with your own half. Your half can pass under your will.
Joint tenants
You own the home together as a whole. When one of you dies, the other owns all of it automatically. No will can change that.
To leave your half in a trust, you first change to tenants in common. One owner can do this alone, by written notice. It cannot be done by will.
Your wills
Mirror wills
You each leave everything to the other, then to the children. Either of you can change a mirror will at any time, even after the first death.
Wills with a life interest trust
Each will puts its maker’s half into a trust on death. The one who is left can live in the home for life. Then that half passes to the people its maker named.
You die first
Mirror wills
Your half passes to your spouse outright. Your spouse now owns the whole home.
Tenants in common, with a trust
Your half passes into the trust. Your spouse lives in the home for life and takes any income. Your spouse’s own half is untouched.
Joint tenants, with a trust
Your spouse owns the whole home automatically. Your half never reaches your will, so the trust receives none of it.
Life goes on
Your spouse owns your half
If your spouse remarries
Marriage cancels a will made before it, unless the will was made expecting that marriage.
With no new will, the law decides who inherits. A new husband or wife comes first, then your spouse’s own children. Your children are step-children to your spouse, so they get nothing.
If your spouse makes a new will
Your spouse can leave the whole home to anyone. Your children inherit your half only if the new will says so.
If nothing changes
Nothing has moved yet. But your spouse can change their will at any time, and a new marriage would cancel it.
Tenants in common, with a trust
In general, neither a new marriage nor a new will changes where your half goes. It stays in the trust for the people you named.
Where your will allows it, the trustees can sell, buy a replacement home or advance capital.
Your spouse dies
Your spouse owned your half
The whole home passes under your spouse’s last will, or under the law if there is none. Your children inherit your half only if your spouse chose that.
Tenants in common, with a trust
The trust ends. Your half passes to the people you named, such as your children. Your spouse’s own half passes under their own will.
What it means for tax
For a married couple, a life interest trust is usually neutral for inheritance tax. The spouse exemption still applies on the first death.
The trust’s share then counts in your spouse’s estate on the second death. Unmarried partners get no spouse exemption, so tax may be due on the first death.
Your spouse must be provided for properly. Aaron checks this with you.
This result is an indication from your answers alone, not legal advice. Each case is assessed on its own merits. Aaron confirms what you need, in writing, once he has looked at your circumstances.
Any figure set by law is as at October 2026. Aaron checks each point against your facts.
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