Technical article

When the Will Says Nothing About Your Things

So while a spouse is alive, the children get no share of the chattels.

By Neil Solomon · 3 min read

Imagine a married couple in England with two grown children. The husband collects watches and keeps them in a drawer. He dies without a will, and there is no list anywhere. Who gets the watches?

Many of us would guess the children share them. In England and Wales, the law may say otherwise.

What the law says in England and Wales

When someone dies without a will and leaves children, the surviving spouse or civil partner takes the personal chattels outright. That is section 46 of the Administration of Estates Act 1925. The spouse also takes a fixed sum, then half of what is left. The other half goes to the children on statutory trusts.

The fixed sum is GBP 322,000 (approximately US$420,000) for deaths from 26 July 2023. Both figures come from the legislation itself, which is a tier A source.

So while a spouse is alive, the children get no share of the chattels. The watches go to the spouse, whole.

What counts as a chattel

Section 55 of the same Act defines personal chattels as tangible movable property. It leaves out money and security for money. It leaves out property used mainly for business. It also leaves out property held only as an investment.

That last exclusion matters to collectors. A drawer of watches worn and enjoyed is easy to call chattels. A set of watches bought and held purely as an investment may fall outside the word. In that case the watches are treated like any other part of the estate, and the split described above applies to their value.

A second place to compare

Rules differ in every country, and in the United States they differ by state. One North Carolina law firm's page says that with no will and no spouse, children generally share equally. It adds that a sale with the proceeds divided is sometimes cleaner than splitting the objects. That is one firm's description, tier C.

The objection

You might say that the family will sort it out. They often do. The spouse may hand a watch to each child the next week, and nobody checks.

That is a gift made after the fact. It is the spouse's choice, not the children's right. If the spouse is also gone, or the family is not in agreement, the law is the only guide left. A short list written now takes the guessing out of that moment.

Who this touches

It touches the partner, who may want the things and not the argument. It touches the children, who may have been told something years ago and now find it has no force. It touches the executor or administrator, who must follow the law and not the memory.

It also touches papers. A will, or a signed list kept with it, is the paper that turns a hope into an instruction.