Picture the exam clock at 4 hours in. You hit a question where a man dies leaving a wife, two children and an estate of £480,000 — no will. You need to split it correctly, in your head, in roughly 90 seconds. Get the statutory legacy figure wrong and the whole answer collapses. This is the daily reality of Wills and the Administration of Estates on the SQE1 FLK2 paper, and it is one of the most rule-heavy subjects you will sit.
The good news? Almost every question in this area rewards a candidate who knows a handful of statutes cold and can apply them calmly. Let me walk you through the parts the assessment loves to test, and exactly what you should be doing to lock them in.
Why Wills and Estates Hurts on the FLK2 Paper
This subject sits inside FLK2 alongside Property, Trusts, Land Law, Solicitor Accounts and Criminal Practice. Each FLK paper is 180 Single Best Answer MCQs over 5 hours 20 minutes, so you have no time to reconstruct rules from scratch. Wills questions punish vagueness. They give you a precise set of facts — a witness who is also a beneficiary, a marriage after a will was signed, a child who predeceases the testator — and only one option applies the law correctly.
The trap is that the wrong answers are usually almost right. They reflect the rule as it was before a reform, or they apply intestacy when a partial intestacy is what actually arises. So your job is precision, not breadth.
Intestacy Rules: The Statutory Legacy You Must Memorise
Start here, because intestacy appears constantly. When someone dies without a valid will, the estate passes under the Administration of Estates Act 1925, as amended by the Inheritance and Trustees' Powers Act 2014.
The order of entitlement turns on who survives:
- Spouse or civil partner and issue (children): the spouse takes all personal chattels, a fixed statutory legacy (currently £322,000) plus interest, and half of the remaining residue absolutely. The other half goes to the issue on the statutory trusts.
- Spouse but no issue: the spouse takes the entire estate. Parents and siblings get nothing — a change many candidates forget came in with the 2014 Act.
- No spouse: the estate passes down a strict statutory ladder — issue, then parents, then siblings of the whole blood, and so on.
Survivorship trap: a spouse must survive the deceased by 28 days to inherit on intestacy. If they die within that window, the estate is distributed as though they had not survived. Examiners love this one.
A second favourite is the statutory trusts for issue. Children take in equal shares, but their interest is contingent on reaching 18 (or marrying earlier). If a child has already died leaving children of their own, those grandchildren take their parent's share — that is the substitution rule. Practise drawing the family tree before you calculate. It saves you from the classic error of giving everything to a surviving spouse when issue also exist.
Valid Wills: Section 9 Formalities and Revocation
Whether a will is valid is pure rule application, and the rules come from the Wills Act 1837. For a will to be formally valid under section 9 it must be:
- in writing;
- signed by the testator (or by someone in their presence and at their direction);
- with the testator intending by that signature to give effect to the will;
- and the signature made or acknowledged in the presence of two witnesses present at the same time, who each then sign.
Beyond form, the testator needs testamentary capacity. The classic test is still Banks v Goodfellow (1870): the testator must understand the nature of making a will, the extent of their property, and the claims to which they ought to give effect. They must also have knowledge and approval of the contents, and be free from undue influence.
Now the part that catches people out — the beneficiary-witness rule. Under section 15 of the Wills Act 1837, if a beneficiary (or their spouse) witnesses the will, the gift to them fails, but the will itself stays valid and they remain a competent witness. So the will works; the witnessing beneficiary just loses their inheritance.
Revocation is the other half of this topic. Commit these to memory:
- Marriage or civil partnership automatically revokes an earlier will (s.18), unless the will was made in contemplation of that particular marriage.
- Divorce does not revoke the whole will, but the former spouse is treated as having died on the date of dissolution, so gifts and appointments to them fail (s.18A).
- Destruction with the intention to revoke, or a later will or codicil, also revokes.
Keep section 18 and section 18A clearly separated in your mind. A question that opens with "she married again after signing the will" is testing automatic revocation; one that opens with "they divorced" is testing the lapse of the spouse's gift only.
Failure of Gifts: Lapse, Ademption and Section 33
Even a valid will can contain a gift that fails. Three doctrines do most of the work here.
Lapse applies where a beneficiary dies before the testator — the gift falls into residue, or if it was the residue, into partial intestacy. But watch section 33 of the Wills Act 1837: where a gift is to the testator's child or remoter descendant who predeceases leaving issue of their own, those issue take the gift instead. It is the will version of the substitution rule.
Ademption applies to specific gifts. If the testator gives "my shares in X Ltd" but has sold them before death, the gift adeems — it simply fails, and the beneficiary gets nothing. Contrast a general or pecuniary legacy, which the executors must satisfy out of the estate.
A short worked example. A testator leaves "my car" to a friend and £20,000 to a nephew, residue to charity. The car was scrapped before death. The car gift adeems; the £20,000 is still payable; the charity takes the rest. Spotting which gift survives and which does not is exactly the discrimination the SBA format is designed to reward.
Administering the Estate: Grants and the PR's Duties
Once death has occurred, someone must administer the estate. If there is a valid will appointing executors, they apply for a grant of probate. If there is no executor able to act, or no will, an administrator applies for letters of administration — with the will annexed where a will exists but appoints no usable executor. The order of who may apply on intestacy is set out in rule 22 of the Non-Contentious Probate Rules 1987, broadly tracking the entitlement to the estate.
Personal representatives owe real duties: to collect in the assets, pay the debts and liabilities in the correct statutory order, pay any inheritance tax, and then distribute to the beneficiaries. A protective step worth remembering is the section 27 Trustee Act 1925 notice — advertising for creditors in the London Gazette and a local newspaper protects the PRs against unknown claims.
Remember the difference in authority: an executor's power derives from the will and exists from the moment of death (the grant merely confirms it). An administrator has no authority until the grant is issued. That timing point shows up in problem questions about who could validly sell estate property.
Inheritance Tax Basics That FLK2 Expects
You are not training to be a tax adviser, but the assessment expects the framework. The nil rate band is currently £325,000; estate value above it is generally taxed at 40%. Key reliefs and exemptions you should be able to apply:
- Spouse/civil partner exemption — transfers between them are exempt without limit.
- Charity exemption — gifts to UK charities are exempt, and a 36% reduced rate can apply where at least 10% of the net estate passes to charity.
- Transferable nil rate band — any unused band of a deceased spouse can be claimed by the survivor's estate.
- Residence nil rate band — an additional allowance where a home passes to direct descendants.
- Potentially exempt transfers — lifetime gifts that become fully exempt if the donor survives seven years, with taper relief in between.
My practical tip: when a question gives you numbers, jot the nil rate band, then deduct exempt gifts (spouse, charity) before applying the 40% rate to the excess. Mixing up the order is where marks leak away.
A Simple Revision Routine That Works
Knowledge without drilling does not survive a five-hour paper. Build a one-page sheet of the figures and rules that recur: the 28-day survivorship rule, the statutory legacy, the section 9 formalities, sections 15, 18, 18A and 33, and the IHT bands. Recite them until they are automatic.
Then do questions in mixed sets, not topic by topic. Real exam questions do not announce "this is about ademption" — you have to recognise the issue from the facts. Always sketch the family tree on intestacy questions, and always check whether a will was made before or after a marriage. Those two habits alone will rescue a surprising number of marks.
If you would like structured support, the CELE SQE courses cover all 13 subjects across FLK1 and FLK2 with worked examples like the ones above. The SQE1 options run from £1,750 for the short-term course up to £3,720 for the long-term course, with a single-FLK option at half price if you only need FLK2, and our SQE1 question bank is available at £575 a month for focused practice. Reach us any time at [email protected], on WeChat SQE100, or at celebar.com — no pressure, just help when you want it.