Free Wills Month is one of the best-known charity initiatives in the UK estate planning world. Held every March and October, it offers people aged 55 and over the opportunity to have a simple Will written or updated at no cost, through participating solicitors funded by partner charities.
For thousands of people each year, it's a useful nudge to finally tick 'make a Will' off the to-do list. But it's also widely misunderstood — and for many families, the basic Will offered through the scheme is not enough to properly protect what they've built.
In this guide we explain exactly how Free Wills Month works in 2026, who qualifies, what's actually included, and — crucially — when a bespoke professional Will is the smarter choice.
Free Wills Month is a coordinated campaign run by a group of well-known UK charities, including Cancer Research UK, the British Heart Foundation, Age UK, the RNIB and others. Participating solicitors agree to write a simple Will free of charge during March and October. In return, the charities cover the solicitor's fee, and the person making the Will is invited (but never required) to consider leaving a gift to one of the partner charities.
To qualify in 2026, you generally need to be aged 55 or over. For couples making mirror Wills together, some firms accept one partner aged 55+ while the other is 50+. You'll need to live within reasonable distance of a participating solicitor and book early — slots fill up within days of opening.
What's included is usually a single Will or a pair of mirror Wills covering straightforward estates: who inherits, guardianship for minor children, simple executors and basic gifts. This is genuinely valuable — and far better than dying intestate, which is still the position for over half of UK adults according to 2026 figures.
However, Free Wills Month is not designed for complex estate planning. The scheme explicitly excludes Trust Wills, business succession planning, complex inheritance tax planning, Islamic Wills and most situations involving blended families, foreign assets or vulnerable beneficiaries. If your situation involves any of these, the participating solicitor will normally quote you privately — at standard market rates.
The biggest gap, in our experience, is property protection. A basic mirror Will leaves everything to your spouse and then your children. That sounds sensible — until the surviving spouse needs care, remarries, or is influenced into changing their Will later. In any of those scenarios, the share you intended for your children can be lost entirely.
A Property Trust Will solves this by ringfencing each partner's share of the home in trust on first death. The surviving spouse retains the right to live there for life, but the underlying share is protected for the children — and can help avoid any 3rd party claims on my estate later down the line. This kind of planning is rarely available through the Free Wills Month scheme.
We recommend Free Wills Month when your estate is genuinely simple: a single property, one set of children from one relationship, no business interests, and a value comfortably under the inheritance tax threshold. In those cases, getting a basic Will done for free is a fantastic outcome and we'd encourage anyone in that position to book a slot.
We recommend a professional Will if you own a home you want to protect for children, have a blended family, run a business, hold assets in trust, want to plan for potential care costs, or want certainty that your wishes can't be quietly unpicked after your death. The cost of a Property Trust Will from Castle Family Legal starts at around £450 — modest compared to the value of the home it protects.
Whichever route you choose, the most important thing is that you make a Will. Free Wills Month is a brilliant catalyst for that decision. Use it as a prompt to look at your situation honestly — and if your estate is more involved than the scheme covers, book a free 30-minute review with us and we'll tell you straight whether a bespoke Will is worth the investment in your case.
