How Does the Intestacy Walkthrough Work?

YouCanDoProbate includes a dedicated Intestacy Walkthrough for estates where the deceased died without a valid Will. It guides you through the Rules of Intestacy to establish who is entitled to inherit, without requiring you to interpret complex legal rules yourself.

What it does

The Intestacy Walkthrough asks you a series of plain-English questions about the deceased’s family circumstances: whether there is a surviving spouse or civil partner, whether there are surviving children, how many, and whether any have already died leaving their own descendants. Based on your answers, the platform works out who is legally entitled to inherit and in what proportions.

This output then feeds directly into the PA1A probate application form and the estate calculation.

Why it matters

The Rules of Intestacy are more complex than most people expect. Where a spouse and children both survive, the split is not simply 50/50. Where a child has predeceased but left their own children, those grandchildren step into the deceased child’s share. The walkthrough handles all of this without requiring you to know the rules.

What happens next

Once the Intestacy Walkthrough is complete, the platform uses the outcome to inform the rest of the application. The IHT400 is completed and the PA1A is generated, all flowing from the walkthrough answers.