The unexpected death of Liam Payne, best known as a member of the global pop phenomenon One Direction, made headlines worldwide. The 31-year-old singer passed away in Argentina in October 2024, and recent reports confirm he died without leaving a Will.

What are the UK rules of intestacy? When someone dies without a Will, they are said to have died intestate, and their estate must be distributed following the rules of intestacy.

When someone dies without leaving a Will, it is known as dying intestate. Intestacy can complicate the probate and estate administration processes, as the law decides who will deal with the estate and who will inherit from it. In this blog, we aim to answer frequently asked questions about the processes involved when someone dies without a Will in the UK.

According to research from October 2021, over 10% of over 75s in the UK have not made a Will. When someone dies without leaving a Will, known as dying intestate, it hands one of their relatives a role they may not have been expecting, as an Administrator must be appointed. In this blog, we aim to clarify what an Administrator of an estate does, and we also look at the help available if you find yourself in this position.

A beneficiary is an individual or organisation who has been named in a Will as receiving a benefit or gift from someone who has passed away. When a person takes the time to create a Will, their goal is to ensure that their loved ones are taken care of after they are gone and that they inherit any assets or items the deceased intended them to own. But what happens if a beneficiary named in a Will cannot be located and is deemed as missing? It's a complication that many people experience when trying to administer the estate of a loved one, and one that can greatly impact, and draw out a process that is already complex enough, causing additional stress. If you have been named as an Executor to a Will, the responsibility to search for missing beneficiaries ultimately falls to you. Therefore, if you do not take reasonable steps to search for a missing beneficiary, you could be personally liable to pay that beneficiary's share if they do come forward at a later date. We'll explore how and why heirs go missing, what happens if a beneficiary cannot be found, what happens if a beneficiary dies, how best to search for these individuals, and how missing beneficiaries can be avoided altogether.

At Kings Court Trust, we deal with a variety of different estates and we are sometimes faced with complex intestacies when someone dies without a Will. In this blog post, we share two particularly complicated case studies where family tree research has been required to identify the entitled heirs, all of which could have been avoided by leaving a Will.

In February 2020, the heartbreaking news broke that Caroline Flack, the popular TV and radio presenter, best known for presenting Love Island, sadly took her life at the age of 40.

Aretha Franklin died on the 16th of August 2018 at the age of 76 after an ongoing battle with pancreatic cancer. Recent news reports have now revealed how a handwritten Will has been discovered under a sofa cushion in the Queen of Soul’s home in Detroit. To ensure the Will’s validity, it is being examined by a handwriting expert.

After a near six decades in the spotlight, Aretha Franklin has died at the age of 76, reportedly without leaving a Will. The Queen of Soul passed away at her home in Detroit on Thursday the 16th of August, after an on-going battle with pancreatic cancer.