Tenants in Common and the Will That Must Match the Ownership

Conveyancers hold this knowledge as routine, but most clients do not. Joint tenants own the whole together; on death the survivor takes everything automatically by survivorship, outside the will. Tenants in common each own a distinct share, and that share passes under the deceased's will, or under intestacy rules if there is no valid will.

That single choice, made on your advice about the legal structure, has enormous consequences later. A tenant in common who dies without a will that deals with their share does not simply pass it to their co-owner. It falls into their estate and is distributed by law, which may send it somewhere nobody intended.

You are the professional who creates this ownership structure. That makes you uniquely well placed to notice that the client's estate planning now needs to catch up, and to make one introduction so it can.

People choose to hold as tenants in common for good reasons: unequal contributions, second marriages, protecting children from a previous relationship, or keeping shares separate for later planning. Every one of those reasons is also a reason the will matters more, not less.

• Unequal shares that should reflect who put in what
• Blended families where children must be protected
• A wish to leave a share to someone other than the co-owner
• Older intentions that a home purchase has now overtaken

If the will does not deal with the share deliberately, the structure you carefully set up can be undone by default rules. The client thinks they have protected their intentions. Without a matching will, they may have done the opposite.

You do not draft the will and you do not advise on its terms. You notice that the ownership structure and the estate plan need to line up, and you point the client to a vetted will and estate specialist.

This is one of the cleanest referrals in conveyancing because it arises directly from the legal work you have just done. There is nothing artificial about it. You have registered a tenancy in common; the natural next question is whether the client's will reflects it.

The phrasing is straightforward. You can explain that holding as tenants in common means each share passes under a will rather than automatically to the co-owner, that many clients review their will at this point, and that you can introduce them to a vetted specialist who deals with exactly this. You are stating a legal fact and offering a door, not giving estate-planning advice.

Because the need is created by the transaction, the client rarely pushes back. They asked you to structure ownership; they are usually glad to be told the structure has a knock-on effect worth handling.

Keep the line bright. You are not recommending a particular will structure, a trust, or any planning approach. You are not commenting on tax. You are observing that the ownership you created passes by will and that a regulated or properly qualified specialist should deal with it. The specialist advises; you introduced.

Under both SRA and CLC frameworks, referral arrangements are permitted where the client is told about them, including any referral fee. A brief, honest disclosure at the point of introduction covers you. The member share of that fee, typically in the 60 to 70 percent range, is the commercial side, but the professional case stands on its own: you have spotted a genuine gap that flows from your own work.

Never imply a particular outcome or suggest the client's affairs are now fully settled. You have opened the right conversation with the right kind of firm; that is the whole of your part.

The practical move is to make this automatic. Whenever a file involves registering clients as tenants in common, the will question gets raised, every time, in the same plain words. That way the introduction is consistent, defensible and never dependent on someone remembering.

Tenants in common is not a rare structure. It runs through unequal-contribution purchases, second marriages and family arrangements of every kind. Each one is a live, on-file reason to introduce a will specialist, and each one is a client who will be genuinely better served for being asked.

You built the ownership. Point the client to the firm that can make sure their will matches it. One observation, one disclosure, one warm introduction to a vetted specialist.