A tightening UK inheritance tax (IHT) regime is pushing growing numbers of couples to marry in a partner’s final days or weeks, according to Home Office data obtained by law firm TWM Solicitors and reported by the Telegraph and Birmingham Live.
The data shows 1,646 short-notice marriage and civil-partnership applications in England and Wales in the 2025–26 tax year — a route that lets couples marry quickly, including in hospital or hospice settings, rather than waiting through the standard notice period. A “deathbed marriage” carries no special legal status beyond an ordinary marriage, but it brings the surviving partner within the inheritance tax spouse exemption, which removes IHT on assets passing between spouses regardless of value — a benefit unmarried partners, however long their relationship, do not get.
The pressure is set to intensify. From April 6, 2027, most unused pension funds and pension death benefits will be drawn into the value of a person’s taxable estate for deaths on or after that date — a change wealth platform AJ Bell’s Sarah Coles said raises the risk that more estates face an inheritance tax bill, or a larger one, for the first time. Rachael Griffin of wealth manager Quilter said the change could push more people to marry in their final days or weeks because “the financial consequences of remaining unmarried are simply too significant to ignore.” TWM Solicitors’ David Lunn warned that a last-minute wedding driven by serious illness often leaves no time to update wills or review pensions, “potentially leaving families exposed to legal disputes between beneficiaries.”
For unmarried couples who jointly own a home or have built shared finances — a common arrangement among people who have relocated, remarried later in life, or hold property across more than one country — the episode is a reminder that UK inheritance tax treats marital status, not relationship length or shared ownership, as the dividing line.
References
The Telegraph – 1,600 couples apply for ‘deathbed marriages’ amid inheritance tax raid / Birmingham Live – HMRC short-notice inheritance tax loophole being used by 1,600 couples
