Should I update my will after moving house?
Moving house does not cancel your will. If you had a valid will before the move, you still have one after it.
What a move can do is make part of your will stop working, and the way you bought the new place may mean the house never passes under the will at all. Both are worth half an hour of your time once the boxes are unpacked.
If your will names the old house specifically
This is the one that catches people. If your will leaves “my property at 12 Acacia Avenue” to a named person, and you no longer own 12 Acacia Avenue when you die, that gift fails. The beneficiary does not get the new house instead, and they do not automatically get its value either.
Lawyers call this ademption, and HMRC’s own inheritance tax manual sets out the rule: a specific gift fails if the property is no longer part of the estate at death. A change of name or form on its own does not trigger it, but selling one house and buying another is a change of substance.
A will drafted with a general gift, say a share of whatever the estate turns out to be, is not affected by a move. One drafted around a particular address is. If you cannot remember which yours is, that is the thing to go and look at.
How you own the new house may matter more than the will
When you buy with someone else, you buy either as joint tenants or as tenants in common. Your conveyancer will have asked you which, usually in writing, during the purchase.
As joint tenants, the property passes automatically to the surviving owner when one of you dies. It does not pass under the will, and nothing your will says about the house changes that. As tenants in common, each of you owns a defined share, and your share does pass under your will.
So a will leaving your half of the house to your children does nothing at all if you hold the property as joint tenants. That is not a drafting error, it is how the two forms of co-ownership work, and it surprises people regularly. If the answer you gave at purchase no longer matches what you want, the ownership can be changed afterwards. That is a transfer of equity, and it is a separate piece of legal work.
In England and Wales, getting married cancels your will
Worth stating plainly because moving and marrying often happen within a year of each other. Government guidance on updating your will says getting married “cancels any will you made before”. Not amends. Cancels.
That is the England and Wales rule. Scotland differs, and marriage does not revoke a will there, so check the position for where you live rather than carrying this one across the border.
If you marry after making a will and do not make a new one, you die intestate, and the rules on intestacy decide who gets what rather than your old instructions.
Separation and divorce are different. They are listed as reasons to review a will rather than events that revoke it, so a will made during a marriage keeps running after the split unless you replace it.
You cannot just cross things out
Once a will has been signed and witnessed you cannot amend it. Crossing out a line, writing in a margin or stapling a note to it does not work and can cause arguments later about whether the document was tampered with.
The two proper routes are a codicil, which is a formal alteration signed and witnessed like the will itself, and a new will that states it revokes the earlier one. Government guidance points to a codicil for small changes and a new will for major ones. Changing the house your estate is built around is usually a major one.
Frequently asked questions
Does my conveyancer update my will as part of the purchase?
No. Conveyancing covers transferring the title and registering it. Wills and probate are separate work, and a firm that does both will treat them as separate matters with separate costs. Your conveyancer will record how you are taking ownership, which is the part that interacts with your will, but they are not reviewing the will itself. Who can do your conveyancing covers what a conveyancing firm is and is not responsible for.
We bought as joint tenants. Can we change that?
Yes. Changing from joint tenants to tenants in common is done by a notice and a restriction entered at HM Land Registry, and it is something a conveyancer handles routinely. People often do it when they want each share to pass under their own will rather than to the survivor.
Is a will made in England valid if I move to Scotland?
Succession law differs between the nations, and Scotland in particular gives a spouse and children rights in the estate that England and Wales do not. A will made elsewhere is not automatically void, but it may not do what you expect. Take advice locally rather than assuming it carries over.
If you are still in the middle of the move rather than the other side of it, you can compare conveyancing quotes from SRA and CLC regulated firms with the legal fees, VAT and disbursements broken down before you instruct anyone.