A deed of variation on a will lets the people who inherit an estate change how it is shared out after the person who made the will has died. Used properly, and within two years, HM Revenue and Customs treats the redirected gift as though the deceased had written it into the will themselves.
This is a guide to changing a will after death: who is actually allowed to do it, what it costs, how long it takes, what it does to the inheritance tax position, and the drawbacks that catch people out. It applies to England and Wales.
What is a deed of variation?
A deed of variation is a formal written document, signed by one or more beneficiaries of an estate, that changes who receives what. It can redirect a gift to a different person or into a trust, alter the shares between beneficiaries, or provide for someone the will left out entirely. It is sometimes called an instrument of variation, a deed of family arrangement, or a letter of variation.
What makes it worth doing, rather than simply handing the money on afterwards, is a rule called read-back. Section 142 of the Inheritance Tax Act 1984 allows a variation made within two years of the death to be treated for inheritance tax as though the deceased had made it. The gift is not treated as coming from the beneficiary, so it is not a lifetime gift by them and no seven-year clock starts running on their own estate.
Without that read-back, the same redirection is just a gift from one living person to another, with all the tax consequences that follow.
Can you change a will after death?
Yes, within limits. The will itself is not rewritten and its wording does not change. What changes is where the money and property actually end up, because the people entitled to it agree to give up or redirect what they were left.
Who is allowed to change a will after death?
This is the point most often misunderstood. An executor cannot change a will. Their job is to carry out what the will says. The power belongs to the beneficiaries, and each beneficiary can only vary their own entitlement, not anyone else’s.
So every beneficiary whose share is reduced or removed by the proposed change has to agree in writing. If one of them refuses, that part of the variation cannot go ahead. There is no mechanism for outvoting a beneficiary and no application to court that will force one to sign.
A beneficiary must also be aged 18 or over and have mental capacity. A parent cannot sign on a child’s behalf. Where a minor or unborn beneficiary is affected, approval has to be sought from the High Court under the Variation of Trusts Act 1958, and the court will only approve a variation that is for that person’s benefit. Where an adult beneficiary lacks capacity, the application goes to the Court of Protection, which applies a best interests test instead. Either route adds months and significant cost.
How soon after death can a will be changed?
There is no waiting period. A variation can be made at any point from the death onwards, and HMRC’s own guidance confirms it can be made before the grant of representation has been issued as well as after it. In practice most solicitors want the estate valued first, because you cannot sensibly judge the tax effect of a redirection until you know what the estate is worth and what tax is due.
The pressure runs the other way. The deadline is two years from the date of death, and there is no extension, so the real risk is leaving it too late rather than acting too early.
Do the executors have to sign the deed?
Usually not. The executors are not automatically parties to a deed of variation, and in most cases the beneficiaries sign it between themselves.
There is one situation where the executors must join in, and it is worth knowing because a good deal of published guidance gets it wrong. Where the variation results in additional inheritance tax becoming payable, section 142(2A) of the Inheritance Tax Act 1984 requires the personal representatives to join in the statement of intent as well. They can decline only if they do not hold enough assets to pay the extra tax. Where the variation reduces the tax, or leaves it unchanged, their signature is not legally required.
In practical terms the executors will usually be involved anyway, because they are the ones who have to distribute the estate differently as a result.
The two-year deadline
The deed must be made within two years of the date of death. Not two years from probate, not two years from the reading of the will, but two years from the death itself.
Miss it and the deed does not become worthless: it remains a valid transfer of property between the people who signed it. What it loses is the read-back. From that point the redirection is treated as a lifetime gift by the beneficiary, which means it becomes a potentially exempt transfer with its own seven-year clock, and it may also be a disposal for capital gains tax.
HMRC does not grant extensions to the two-year period. Start the conversation early. Beginning within the first six to twelve months leaves room for valuations, negotiation between beneficiaries, drafting, and the inevitable delay in getting several people in different places to sign the same document.
Why beneficiaries change a will after death
The reasons fall into a handful of recognisable patterns.
Reducing inheritance tax
A variation can move assets to a person or a structure that carries a lower tax charge, or recover an allowance the will accidentally wasted. This is covered in detail further down.
Providing for someone the will left out
A grandchild born after the will was signed, a partner who was never named, a carer the deceased clearly intended to benefit. A variation lets the existing beneficiaries put that right without anyone going to court.
Passing an inheritance straight to the next generation
A beneficiary who does not need the money can redirect it to their own children, which keeps it out of their estate without creating a lifetime gift on their part.
Protecting a vulnerable beneficiary
Assets can be redirected into a trust designed to support someone who would struggle to manage an outright inheritance, rather than handed over as a lump sum.
Settling a dispute
Where beneficiaries disagree about what is fair, or where someone is threatening a claim under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975, a variation can form the basis of a negotiated settlement and avoid litigation.
Increasing a gift to charity
Where the deceased had charitable intentions, a variation can increase the share going to charity, and in some estates that reduces the rate of tax on everything else.
Deed of variation and inheritance tax
The inheritance tax angle is the reason most deeds of variation exist, and it is where the technical detail matters most.
The two statements the deed must contain
This is the single most common reason a deed fails. The document must contain a statement, made by everyone making it, that they intend section 142(1) of the Inheritance Tax Act 1984 to apply. Without that statement there is no inheritance tax read-back, however well drafted the rest of it is.
If the capital gains tax read-back is also wanted, the deed needs a second and entirely separate statement that section 62(6) of the Taxation of Chargeable Gains Act 1992 is to apply. These are two distinct elections and a deed can make one without the other. Where the deed omits the capital gains statement, the redirection can be treated as a disposal by the original beneficiary, with a capital gains tax bill attached.
Neither statement covers income tax. Income arising after the death is taxed on whoever was actually entitled to it at the time, and a variation does not rewrite that history.
Recovering a lost residence nil rate band
The residence nil rate band is worth up to £175,000 per person, but only where a qualifying home passes to direct descendants. A will that leaves the house to a sibling, a friend or a wide discretionary trust wastes it entirely.
Redirecting the property to a child or grandchild within two years recovers the allowance. On a couple’s combined estate that can be £350,000 of extra threshold, which at 40 per cent is £140,000 of tax.
Skipping a generation without starting a seven-year clock
A beneficiary who already has enough can pass their inheritance on to their own children. Doing that by simply handing the money over creates a potentially exempt transfer, and if they die within seven years it comes back into their estate.
Doing it by deed of variation does not. Because HMRC treats the gift as having been made by the deceased, no transfer arises on the beneficiary’s part at all. The money leaves their estate immediately and no seven-year clock starts.
The 36 per cent charity rate
Where at least 10 per cent of an estate passes to a qualifying charity, the rate of inheritance tax on the rest drops from 40 per cent to 36 per cent. A variation can be used to increase a charitable gift to the level that triggers it, and in the right estate the tax saved can come close to covering the extra donation.
The arithmetic is more involved than it sounds. The 10 per cent test applies to the baseline amount of the relevant component of the estate rather than to the whole net estate, and an estate can have up to three components. Have the figures checked before relying on it.
There is also a condition specific to charitable variations: the read-back does not apply unless the charity has been notified that the deed exists. In practice that means writing to the charity before the deed is relied on and keeping the correspondence. The charity does not have to be a party to the deed, but HMRC will want evidence that it knows.
The income tax trap when children are involved
Redirecting an inheritance into a trust for your own minor children looks efficient and often is not. For income tax, the parent is treated as the settlor of that trust, so where the trust produces more than £100 of income a year for a minor child, the whole of that income is taxed as the parent’s. The inheritance tax saving can be quietly swallowed by an annual income tax bill nobody budgeted for.
Telling HMRC
If the variation reduces the inheritance tax due, or makes no difference to it, there is nothing to send HMRC.
If it increases the tax, section 218A of the Inheritance Tax Act 1984 requires a copy of the instrument and notice of the additional tax to be delivered to HMRC within six months of the date the deed was made. Missing that can attract a penalty, rising the longer the failure goes on.
Deed of variation after probate
A deed of variation after probate is perfectly possible. Section 142 applies whether or not the administration of the estate is complete, and HMRC’s guidance confirms that a disposition can be varied after the estate has been fully administered and the property already handed out. The two-year deadline is the only timing constraint that matters.
What changes after probate is not the law but the practicalities.
What gets harder once the estate has been distributed
The asset has to be given back and transferred again. If a beneficiary has already spent the money, mixed it with their own savings, or used it as a deposit on a house, redirecting that particular asset may simply not be possible any more.
Where land has already been registered in a beneficiary’s name, a further transfer at the Land Registry is needed, with its own costs. Any capital gains accruing between distribution and variation need checking.
There is also a trap. If a beneficiary has to be persuaded to hand something back, and anything of value passes to them in return, the variation can be treated as made for consideration and lose its read-back altogether. That is dealt with next.
What a deed of variation cannot do
Validate an invalid will
If the will was never valid, a variation cannot fix that. The problem has to be resolved another way.
Override a beneficiary who says no
A variation cannot proceed without the agreement of every beneficiary whose entitlement it affects. There are no exceptions and no way round it.
Buy a beneficiary’s agreement
This is the limit HMRC challenges most often. The read-back does not apply where the variation is made for consideration in money or money’s worth. A beneficiary cannot be paid to sign. The only permitted exception is where the consideration is another variation of the same estate, so beneficiaries can trade one redirection for another between themselves. A side payment from outside the estate will cost the deed its tax advantages, and the same restriction applies to the capital gains read-back.
Change the executor
A deed of variation has no power to remove or replace an executor, or to change the guardians named in a will. Only the court can remove an executor.
Override third party rights
A variation only binds the beneficiaries who agree to it. It cannot unwind a sale to someone outside the estate or interfere with rights held by people who are not beneficiaries.
Vary the same property twice
Property that has already been redirected by an effective variation cannot be redirected again with the benefit of read-back. Nothing stops the beneficiaries signing a second document, but it will be treated as a lifetime gift by whoever makes it. Separate variations covering different parts of an entitlement are fine; a second bite at the same asset is not.
The disadvantages of a deed of variation
Deeds of variation are useful, but they are not free of downsides and the marketing material on this subject rarely says so.
It is irrevocable. Once the deed is validly executed there is no cooling-off period and no right to change your mind. You are giving away something you own.
You get one attempt at the same asset. Because a second variation of the same property does not get read-back, a badly drafted deed cannot simply be redone. The only route is an application to court to rectify it, which is slow and expensive.
Everyone affected has to agree. One reluctant beneficiary can stop the whole thing, and you cannot pay them to come round without destroying the tax treatment.
It can affect means-tested benefits and care funding. Giving up an inheritance can be treated as deprivation of assets by a local authority or by the Department for Work and Pensions, and the person may be assessed as though they still had it. This needs checking before signing, not after.
Minors and people lacking capacity need a court order, which turns a few weeks into several months and adds legal costs that can outweigh the saving.
The income tax settlor rule can undo the benefit where a trust for your own children is involved.
It costs money, and where the estate is not large enough for the tax saving to be meaningful, the fee may be most of the benefit.
Can a deed of variation be challenged?
A deed of variation is a deed, so it is attacked using the ordinary law of deeds rather than the law of wills. The realistic grounds are lack of capacity, a minor’s interest varied without court approval, undue influence or duress, misrepresentation, and defective execution such as a missing witness.
Where the deed says something the parties did not intend, the remedy is usually rectification rather than cancellation. The court corrects the wording to reflect what was actually agreed, and it will not do so purely to secure a tax advantage. Courts have rectified deeds where a solicitor worked from an out-of-date precedent and left out the section 142 statement altogether, and where a badly worded legacy shifted tens of thousands of pounds of tax onto the wrong beneficiary.
Simply regretting it is not a ground. In Canarapen v Gauchenot [2025] EWHC 2728 (Ch), a beneficiary redirected her one-third share of her mother’s estate to a relative and then tried to undo it when she became unhappy with what he planned to do with the property. She argued the deed had never been delivered and, alternatively, that she had signed under a mistake. The court rejected both. What she described as her mistake was a misprediction about what would happen next, not the kind of mistake that allows a gift to be set aside, and the understanding she said was fundamental to the arrangement appeared nowhere in the documents.
The practical lesson is that the protection has to be built into the deed at the time. If something matters to you, it needs to be written down before you sign.
How long does a deed of variation take?
The drafting is the quick part. A straightforward deed can be prepared in a matter of hours, and most firms quote two to four weeks to produce one from the point of instruction.
Total elapsed time in a simple case is realistically two to six weeks. What consumes it is not the lawyer’s work but taking instructions, circulating the draft, and getting every affected beneficiary to sign with a witness present, which is slow whenever the beneficiaries live apart.
A complex variation, involving a trust, several beneficiaries, property, or a tax position that needs modelling, runs from a few weeks to several months. Where a minor or someone lacking capacity is involved and a court application is needed, expect several months at least.
Two dates then matter. The deed must be made within two years of the death. Where it increases the inheritance tax due, HMRC must be told within six months of the deed being made.
How much does a deed of variation cost?
For a straightforward variation, with one or two adult beneficiaries, no trust and no property transfer, published solicitor prices generally sit between about £350 and £750 plus VAT. For a complex variation creating a trust, involving several beneficiaries or land, or needing tax modelling, the published range is roughly £1,000 to £2,500 plus VAT, and many firms will not quote a fixed price at that level at all.
Those are wide ranges, and the gap is real. Firms publish prices that differ by four times or more for work they each describe as straightforward. Understanding why tells you what to ask when you get a quote.
Why quotes vary so much
How complex your variation actually is. One adult beneficiary redirecting a cash legacy is a different job from four beneficiaries, a house and a trust for minor children. Most of the price difference between firms is really a difference in what each of them assumed you needed.
Whether a trust is involved. Creating a trust within the deed moves the work into a different bracket, and this is where most firms stop quoting fixed fees and switch to an hourly rate.
Whether land or property is being redirected. That usually means a Land Registry transfer on top of the deed, with its own costs, and it may raise stamp duty questions depending on the circumstances.
Whether the firm is already administering the estate. Several firms charge noticeably less where the deed forms part of a probate matter they are already handling, because the estate information is in front of them. If you are already instructing a solicitor on the estate, ask what the deed would cost as an add-on.
Whether tax advice is included. A deed that simply redirects a gift is one thing. Modelling the inheritance tax effect, checking the residence nil rate band, considering capital gains and the effect on benefits, and dealing with HMRC afterwards is advice work, and some quotes include it while others do not.
Fixed fee or hourly. A fixed fee gives you certainty but is usually pitched to cover the firm’s risk. An hourly rate may work out cheaper on a simple matter and considerably more on a complicated one.
Whether VAT is included. Most published figures are quoted plus VAT at 20 per cent, but not all are, and at these levels that is a meaningful difference. Always confirm which you have been given.
How close you are to the two-year deadline. Some firms add a premium for work that has to be turned around quickly, which is one more reason not to leave it late.
Compare three quotes before you instruct anyone
Because the price depends so heavily on the specifics of your estate, a published price list is only ever a rough guide. The only figure that means anything is one given by a solicitor who has seen your circumstances.
The Probate Network makes that straightforward. Complete one short form describing the estate and what you need, and you will receive three written quotes from different regulated firms, normally within two working days. Each one sets out a clear breakdown of fees and exactly what is included, so you can compare like with like rather than guessing. It is free and there is no obligation to instruct any of them.
Request your three probate quotes and see what a deed of variation would actually cost for your estate.
What about online templates?
Deed of variation templates are available online for £45 to £55, and in a very simple case with no tax at stake they may be adequate. In most cases they are a false economy. The recurring failures in this area are drafting failures rather than conceptual ones, and courts have had to rectify deeds where a professional left out the section 142 statement entirely. Because the same property cannot be varied twice with the benefit of read-back, a deed that gets it wrong cannot simply be torn up and redone. Fixing it means an application to court, which will cost many times the fee you saved.
Do you need a solicitor for a deed of variation?
There is no legal requirement to use one. Whether you should comes down to what is at stake.
Where the variation is small, simple and has no tax effect, the risk of doing it yourself is modest. Where it involves inheritance tax, a trust, property, a business, a beneficiary on means-tested benefits, or anyone under 18, the cost of advice is small against what an error costs. HMRC publishes a checklist, form IOV2, which sets out the conditions a variation has to satisfy, and it is a useful reality check on any draft.
Get advice through The Probate Network
If you are considering changing a will after death, The Probate Network can connect you with an SRA-regulated solicitor who handles deeds of variation, so you can find out what your options are and what the work would cost before committing to anything. You can book a free legal consultation or request a quote.
Frequently asked questions
Can you change a will after someone has died?
Yes. The beneficiaries can sign a deed of variation redirecting all or part of what they were left. The will itself is not altered, but the estate is distributed differently. Every beneficiary whose share is reduced has to agree in writing, and the deed must be made within two years of the death to receive the tax treatment that makes it worthwhile.
How soon can an executor change a will after death?
An executor cannot change a will at all. Only the beneficiaries can vary their own entitlements, and they can do so at any time from the death onwards, including before the grant of probate is issued. The executors have to join in the deed only where the change increases the inheritance tax payable and they hold enough assets to pay it.
Can a deed of variation be done after probate?
Yes. A variation can be made after the grant has been issued and even after the estate has been fully distributed, provided it is still within two years of the death. The difficulty after distribution is practical rather than legal: the asset has to be handed back and transferred again, which may be impossible if the money has already been spent or the property sold.
How much does a deed of variation cost?
A straightforward deed generally costs between about £350 and £750 plus VAT. A complex one involving a trust, property or several beneficiaries is commonly in the region of £1,000 to £2,500 plus VAT, and is often charged by the hour rather than at a fixed price. Published prices differ by four times or more for what firms each describe as simple work, because the fee depends on the complexity of your estate, whether a trust or property is involved, and how much tax advice is included. The practical answer is to compare written quotes from more than one firm. You can request three through The Probate Network, free and without obligation, normally within two working days.
How long does a deed of variation take?
Most solicitors take two to four weeks to prepare the deed, and a simple case runs two to six weeks from instruction to signature. Complex cases take a few weeks to several months. Where a minor or a person lacking capacity is affected, a court application is required and the timescale extends to several months at least.
Can a deed of variation be cancelled or challenged?
It is irrevocable once validly signed, and regretting it later is not a ground for undoing it. It can be challenged where a signatory lacked capacity, was unduly influenced or misled, or where the deed was not properly executed. Where the wording does not reflect what was actually agreed, the court can rectify it rather than cancel it.
Do all the beneficiaries have to agree to a deed of variation?
Every beneficiary whose entitlement is reduced or removed must agree and sign. Beneficiaries who are unaffected do not need to. A signatory must be 18 or over and have mental capacity, and where a minor or someone lacking capacity is affected the court has to approve the variation on their behalf.
This article is for general guidance only and does not constitute legal, tax or financial advice. Rules, thresholds and professional fees can change, and every estate is different. For advice on your own circumstances, speak to a qualified professional. You can book a free legal consultation through The Probate Network.
