My partner's will on a scrap piece of paper helped save my home

The number of unmarried couples living as a family has risen by 33pc in the last decade - making this the fastest-growing family type.

Also on the rise are the problems which result when an unmarried partner dies without a will, potentially stranding the survivor without property or other assets.

The Cohabitation Rights Bill - which aims to better protect the rights of people who lived together following one of their deaths - is still passing through Parliament, and unlikely to be effective until next year at the earliest.

Until then cohabitees are being warned that they have no legal rights to any assets when their partner dies without a valid will being in place.

Under rules of intestacy only married or civil partners, or some close relatives such a children, can inherit.

Web designer Sue Singer, 56, reflects regularly on the lack of protection for cohabitees, and the risk of the surviving partner having to sell property on the death of the other.

It was almost "by luck", she says, that a makeshift will written by her partner months before his death, a decade ago, was able to be validated after his death. It ensured she could live on in their shared home.

Source:

www.telegraph.co.uk