Read time: 2 mins (approx.)

Most people assume their will decides what happens to everything they own.

For a good proportion of an estate, that is true.

But not for everything.

Some assets pass outside a will entirely, determined not by what you have written down but by the way the asset is held.

Joint ownership is the most common example.

If you own a property or an account jointly with someone else, there are two ways that ownership can be structured, and the difference between them is significant.

The first is known as joint tenants.

Here, both parties own the whole of the asset together. When one dies, their interest passes automatically to the survivor, regardless of what the will says.

The second is tenants in common.

Here, each party owns a distinct share. That share forms part of their estate on death and passes according to their will.

Most couples who bought a home together will have done so as joint tenants, often without the distinction ever being explained to them.

For many families that works perfectly well.

But there are circumstances where it may not produce the outcome people expect.

Consider a second marriage where both partners have children from a previous relationship.

If the family home is held as joint tenants, the entire property passes to the surviving spouse on first death.

What happens to it after that is then in the survivor’s hands, and there is no legal obligation for it to pass to the children of the first spouse to die.

The will of the person who died first has no bearing on it at all.

That is not a flaw in the system. It is simply how survivorship works.

But it can come as a considerable surprise to families who assumed their wills had dealt with the question.

There are planning consequences too.

Certain trust arrangements rely on an asset, or a share of it, forming part of the estate so that it can be directed somewhere specific.

Where an asset passes automatically by survivorship, that option is not available in the same way.

The good news is that this is usually straightforward to address.

A joint tenancy can be severed, converting the ownership to tenants in common, which allows each party to direct their share through their will.

Whether that is the right step depends entirely on the family and what they are trying to achieve.

The point is simply that it should be a decision rather than an assumption.

If you are not sure how your property or accounts are currently held, it is worth finding out.

It is one of the simpler things to check, and one of the more consequential.