The stale will after a life event: your cue to refer

A will made twenty years ago can feel like a solved problem. The client remembers signing it, files it away, and rarely looks at it again. Yet families change, assets change, and the law that governs both keeps moving. A document that perfectly captured someone's wishes in one decade can actively frustrate them in the next.

The comfort is the danger. Because the client believes they are protected, they never revisit the will, and no one prompts them to. That is where an alert introducer becomes genuinely valuable. You are frequently the person who learns about the life event first, long before any specialist does.

Two life events deserve special attention because their legal effect surprises almost everyone. First, marriage generally revokes an existing will in England and Wales, unless the will was expressly made in contemplation of that marriage. A client who married after making their will may effectively have no valid will at all, without knowing it.

Second, divorce does not revoke a will, but it treats the former spouse as if they had died before the client. Any gift to the ex-spouse fails, and any appointment of them as executor falls away. A client who divorced and never updated their will may have gaping holes where they least expect them. When a client mentions a wedding or a decree absolute, your antennae should rise.

Beyond marriage and divorce, a range of ordinary milestones can quietly outdate a will. Listen for:

• The birth or adoption of a child or grandchild.
• The death of a named executor or beneficiary.
• A house move, a significant inheritance, or the sale of a business.
• A child reaching adulthood, marrying, or falling into difficulty.
• A move abroad, or acquiring property in another country.
• An estrangement or reconciliation within the family.

None of these requires you to assess the will yourself. Each is simply a flag that the document may no longer say what the client assumes it says.

You can surface the issue gently and without a hint of advice. A phrasing that works well is: "Congratulations on the wedding. One thing worth knowing is that getting married can actually cancel an existing will, so it's a good moment to have a specialist take a look." You have shared a fact, not an instruction, and you have pointed toward the right kind of help.

Clients often respond with surprise, because the marriage-revocation rule is so little known. That surprise is exactly why the referral matters. You have alerted them to a genuine risk they would otherwise have carried in blissful ignorance, and you have done so without stepping beyond your role.

Life events are natural conversation points. When a client shares news of a marriage, a new grandchild, or an inheritance, they are already reflecting on the future. That reflective moment is the ideal time to mention that their will may need a fresh pair of expert eyes, and to offer an introduction to vetted specialists who handle exactly this.

Through SmartPeer, that introduction earns you a share of the resulting fee while the client receives regulated advice from a vetted firm. You never touch the will yourself. You simply connect a life event you heard about with the professionals equipped to respond to it. Over a year, these milestones accumulate, and the introducer who listens for them turns ordinary good news into a steady, ethical referral habit.

The reason stale wills slip past so many professionals is that nobody has made noticing them a habit. You can change that with a small, deliberate practice. Whenever a client updates you on their personal circumstances, add a silent checklist in your mind: has anything happened that could affect an existing will? A marriage, a divorce, a death, a birth, a move, a windfall. If the answer is yes, you have a potential referral.

This does not slow your work or pull you off topic. It is simply a lens you carry into every client conversation. Over time it becomes automatic, and you will be surprised how often the flag comes up. The introducer who treats life events as a standing prompt, rather than a one-off, catches the stale-will problem again and again, protects clients from documents that no longer reflect their wishes, and builds a genuinely reliable stream of well-timed introductions to vetted specialists.