Wills and Administration of Estates SQE1 questions

What Wills and the Administration of Estates covers in SQE1

The SRA's assessment specification for assessments from 1 September 2026 covers wills and intestacy, probate and administration practice, and the related tax.

• Validity: testamentary capacity, knowledge and approval, duress and undue influence, the formal requirements, and who bears the burden of proof when validity is challenged.
• Executors: appointment, eligibility, suitability, renunciation and reservation of power.
• Alteration and revocation: alterations before and after execution, codicils, the methods of revocation, and the effect of divorce or dissolution.
• Gifts and intestacy: types of gift, failure of gifts, section 46 of the Administration of Estates Act 1925 and the statutory trusts, and property passing outside the estate.
• Probate practice: the need for a grant, priority under the Non-Contentious Probate Rules, applications, valuation, excepted estates and funding the first payment of inheritance tax.
• Administration: personal representatives' duties, their liability and protection against unknown or missing beneficiaries and creditors, and claims under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975.
• Tax: inheritance tax on lifetime transfers and on death, exemptions, reliefs and anti-avoidance, and the personal representatives' income tax and capital gains tax during the administration.

The 2026 changes mostly spell out existing topics, naming knowledge and approval, the burden of proof, priority for grants and gifts with a reservation of benefit. Foreign law, assets and taxes are excluded.

Where it sits in FLK2

From January 2027 FLK2 session 1 covers Wills and the Administration of Estates, Solicitors Accounts in the context of wills, Trusts and Land Law, with the questions mixed in a random order. An estate may include a jointly owned house or an interest under a trust, so the subjects overlap. Ethics comes up in taking instructions through a relative, in a gift to the solicitor's family, and in acting for two spouses whose wishes diverge.

The SRA's 2019 blueprint, the only version published in full, puts the area at 14 to 20 percent of FLK2. In the SRA's annual report for 2023/24 the mean scaled score for Wills and Intestacy was 265, the lowest of any SQE1 practice area in that report.

Questions follow the law as at 11 September 2026, the cut-off for the January 2027 sitting. Nil rate bands, rates and thresholds are given in the question. What is examined is which exemptions and reliefs apply, their conditions and the order of the steps.

Where candidates go wrong

• Section 9 presence. The testator must sign, or acknowledge the signature, in the presence of two witnesses present at the same time. Each witness then signs in the testator's presence but need not sign in front of the other. Candidates swap the two rules.
• The spouse on intestacy. Where there is issue, the spouse takes the personal chattels, the statutory legacy and half the rest absolutely, and the other half goes on the statutory trusts for the issue. The spouse must survive by 28 days. A cohabitant takes nothing on intestacy however long the relationship, and a separated spouse keeps their rights unless there is a decree of divorce or judicial separation.
• Lapse. A gift to a child or remoter descendant who dies before the testator passes to that beneficiary's own issue under section 33 of the Wills Act 1837, unless the will shows a contrary intention. Otherwise a lapsed specific or pecuniary gift falls into residue, and a lapsed share of residue passes under the intestacy rules.
• The residence nil rate band. It needs a home passing to direct descendants, which include step-children, it is limited to the value of the home, and it tapers away where the estate is worth more than £2 million.
• Protection of personal representatives. Statutory advertisements under section 27 of the Trustee Act 1925 protect against claims the personal representatives did not know about, not against a claim they knew of, and a creditor can still follow the assets into a beneficiary's hands.

How to revise Wills and Estates

Work inheritance tax on death in the same order every time: lifetime gifts in the seven years before death, then the estate less debts and funeral expenses, exemptions, reliefs, the nil rate band left after lifetime gifts, the residence nil rate band and any transferred bands, and the rate. Then decide who bears the tax; by default residue bears it on the free estate. The SQE1 tax calculator works these steps with the figures supplied.

Learn the intestacy order and the priority for a grant as numbered lists. A will trust for a minor draws on the powers of maintenance and advancement in the Trusts questions, and the guide to passing SQE1 sets out how to build practice into each week.