The tale, in three lines

Ella's father wrote his Will quickly and cheaply, on the recommendation of a friend who knew someone who did them online. Nobody asked him any questions.

It left everything to his wife. Ella kept the right to live in the house, and nothing else - not her mother's jewellery, not the heirlooms, not the savings her father had quietly built for her.

What actually happens in real life

Leaving everything to your husband or wife is the most common Will there is. It is simple, it feels right, and for many families it works.

It stops working when there are children from an earlier relationship. Once your estate passes to your partner, it is theirs. You cannot assume a spouse will provide for a child who is not their own, however much you trusted them to. There is nothing dishonourable in that: their Will, quite naturally, will look after their own people.

Two details catch families out again and again. The first is that a right to remain in a house is not the same as inheriting it - it can feel like protection while leaving someone with nothing they own. The second is that possessions with more sentimental value than financial value pass with the rest of the estate unless the Will deals with them by name.

And there is a quieter failure still. An estate can only reach the people you chose if somebody can find it. Savings, policies and increasingly digital assets that nobody knew existed are among the commonest reasons an inheritance never arrives at all.

Challenging a Will afterwards is possible. It also costs money, and the person who has just been left with nothing is rarely the person who has it.

Five questions to ask yourself

1. If you died tomorrow and everything passed to your partner, what would your children actually receive - and when?
2. Does your Will deal with particular possessions by name, or does it assume everyone will agree afterwards?
3. Do you, or does your partner, have children from an earlier relationship?
4. Is there anything you own that nobody else knows about? Old policies, savings, digital assets, cryptocurrency?
5. If you died this week, could the people sorting out your affairs find everything - and would they know what you intended?

What good looks like

A Will that does both jobs at once: your partner provided for fairly, and what you meant for your children ringfenced so it reaches them. In practice that usually means a trust written into the Will, holding specific assets for named people, released when you choose rather than when the law decides. Personal items dealt with by name. Digital assets recorded, with instructions for who gets access and when.

Alongside it, a clear record of everything you own and who needs to know about it, so nothing is lost in the gap between your Will and your family.

Done properly, none of this is difficult. Left undone, most of it cannot be fixed afterwards.

If any of those five questions gave you pause, that is the signal.