Anna stood in the hallway, still in her slippers, half a coffee in her hand, when she opened the envelope. At the top, a sentence in bold stared back at her: “Notification of inheritance reassessment under the new law effective January.” She read it twice, then a third time, her eyes jumping over words like “recalculation,” “new rules,” and “descendants’ share.”
The flat her parents worked all their lives to pay off was suddenly a puzzle of percentages and legal terms. Her brother called a few minutes later; he had received the same envelope. Two different lives, one family story, and between them a law that had quietly changed while they were busy living. No one had warned them at Sunday lunch. A new rule was now deciding who gets what, and in which order.
The quiet revolution of inheritance in January
The new inheritance law coming into force in January doesn’t arrive with fireworks. It lands in mailboxes, in notaries’ offices, in conversations that start with a cautious: “Have you heard about the change this year?” On paper, it looks technical: new tax thresholds, updated rules on who inherits first, rights for partners, and more protection for certain descendants.
In real life, it feels like someone has moved the furniture in a family home. For many families, the biggest shock is timing. The law applies to deaths occurring from January onwards, which means estates thought to be “simple” suddenly get re-opened. Adult children who believe they will share everything equally discover that grandchildren, stepchildren, or a long-time partner now have a different place in the queue. The emotional map of inheritance is being redrawn, line by legal line.
Take Mark, 42, who lost his mother in mid-January. He’s an only child, divorced, with two kids who mostly live with their mum. For years, the family assumption was clear: the small house outside town would go to him, as the direct heir, and eventually to his children. When he sat down with the notary, the mood changed.
The new law shifted several elements: an updated tax-free allowance for descendants, a more explicit recognition of grandchildren if they are “represented” in place of a deceased parent, and stricter treatment of gifts made in the last years of life. His mother had helped with his divorce, transferring him money for legal fees. Under the new rules, those transfers now needed to be counted differently in the estate’s balance.
The result wasn’t a scandal. It was a long, heavy silence as Mark realized that what his mother “wanted” and what the law now *does* are not always the same script. His children’s future in that house suddenly felt more fragile.
Behind these stories sits a cold logic. Governments facing ageing populations and huge intergenerational wealth gaps are tweaking inheritance law to nudge money in new directions. Sometimes the goal is to tax more of it. Sometimes it’s to protect vulnerable descendants, or to give legal weight to modern families who don’t fit the old “married couple + two kids” box.
The new January rules usually turn around three big levers: the tax allowances for children and grandchildren, the share that must legally go to descendants (the “reserved” portion), and how stepchildren and long-term partners are treated. For families where there is property, a business, or children from different relationships, small legal details can mean tens of thousands of whatever currency you live with. On paper, the law looks neutral. In the room where siblings argue about what mum “really wanted”, it’s anything but.
What you can do now to avoid nasty surprises
The most powerful move in this new landscape is brutally simple: write or update your will before the law starts biting. Not a vague document from ten years ago found in an old drawer. A fresh one, drafted with someone who actually understands the January changes and how they apply to your family structure.
This doesn’t mean controlling everything from beyond the grave. It means giving your descendants a map instead of a maze.
Start by listing what really exists: property, savings, insurance, debts, that “informal” help you already gave to one child but not the others. Then ask how the new law would slice that if you did nothing. Only after that do you think about what you actually want: more security for a disabled child, a fairer deal for stepchildren, a safety net for a partner who isn’t legally married to you. The law sets the frame, your will paints inside it.
On a wet Thursday evening, I sat with a couple in their fifties, Lisa and Ahmed, at their kitchen table. They had three children: two from their marriage, one from Lisa’s previous relationship. Before the January change, they’d told themselves everything would “naturally” go one-third each. They hadn’t really checked whether the law agreed.
When their notary walked them through the new inheritance rules, including how descendants from prior relationships are counted and how tax allowances work per child, the numbers shifted. Their eldest, technically a stepchild to Ahmed in legal terms, would end up with less if they didn’t adjust things. Not out of bad intention. Just because the law follows bloodlines and signatures, not feelings and history.
They decided to use the new framework to rebalance things: a clearer will, a small life insurance policy where the stepchild was sole beneficiary, and a written letter to their children explaining the choices. It didn’t remove the emotions. It made space for them.
That kind of planning sounds heavy. And yes, it forces you to look directly at questions usually avoided until a hospital corridor forces the issue. But the January law is ruthless to silence. If you refuse to decide, it decides in your place. The big shift is this: descendants now inherit within a tighter, more detailed system, where “default” rules are not neutral.
Once you know how the new law cuts the cake, you can still move some slices. You can use gifts while you’re alive, within the new thresholds for children and grandchildren. You can rethink who co-owns the family home. You can formalise step-relationships that have existed for twenty years but never saw a lawyer. And sometimes, you simply accept what the law says and spend your energy preventing resentment rather than chasing tax optimisation.
Small moves that change everything for your descendants
There’s one practical move that saves a lot of pain: sit down with your closest family and run through a simple “what if” scenario under the January rules. Not a dramatic TV-style reading of the will, just a clear conversation: “If I died next year, here’s roughly what would happen, here’s what the law says my descendants get, here’s what I’d like.”
Most people never do this. Yet a one-hour talk today can prevent five years of cold stares over Christmas dinner.**
The method is almost boring: you bring a rough list of assets, you ask a professional for a summary of how the new law treats your children, grandchildren, or stepchildren, and you write down, in simple words, what you intend. Not legal poetry. Just: “The flat goes to X, the savings are shared like this, here’s why.” The document doesn’t replace a real will, but it guides your descendants when grief makes everything foggy.
People often confess the same fear: “If I start talking about inheritance, they’ll think I’m about to die.” The irony is brutal. When no one talks, the law talks in their place – with no tact at all. One classic mistake under the new rules is assuming that everything automatically flows to children in a way that feels “fair”. In modern families, that word covers a lot of messy realities.
Another frequent trap: treating gifts and help given while you’re alive as if they were invisible once you’re gone. The January framework tends to drag those gestures back into the calculations, especially when they were generous. That can make other descendants feel cheated, or on the contrary, deeply guilty.
On a more emotional level, descendants often discover those past gifts only when the numbers are laid bare. “She helped you buy your house?”; “He paid off your debts?”. The law is blind to the shame or pride hidden in those stories. You, while you’re still here, are not. Let’s be honest: nobody really does this every day.
“The new inheritance law doesn’t create family tensions,” explains one seasoned notary I spoke with. “It reveals the ones that were already there, then puts numbers on them. My job is less about reading articles of law and more about keeping conversations humane.”
For your own family, imagine a small mental checklist before January turns into April and then into “too late”:
* Have I understood how the new law treats my children, grandchildren, or stepchildren?
* Do I have a will that reflects that reality, not the world as it was 15 years ago?
* Have I written down, somewhere, the help I already gave to one descendant?
* Do my loved ones know where to find key documents if I suddenly vanish?
* Have we had at least one honest conversation, even if it felt awkward?
On a human level, this is less about mastering legal vocabulary and more about choosing between two kinds of discomfort: a slightly clumsy talk today, or silent misunderstandings frozen in legal stone for your descendants tomorrow.
A law about money that really talks about love and fear
The new inheritance law arriving in January looks like a technical reform. Updates to tax brackets, changes in the order of heirs, new protections here, stricter conditions there. But once you see how it lands in real lives, it becomes something else: a mirror held up to what we truly owe each other across generations.
Every choice you make now – or avoid making – sends a message your descendants will read long after you’re gone. Who you protect first. Who you trust. Who you forgot to mention because the law didn’t “see” them. For a stepchild or a grandchild who always felt a bit on the side, a single line in a will under the new rules can feel like a whole embrace.
On a more selfish level, there’s relief too. Knowing that, if the worst happens next year, there’s at least a basic plan in place. Not a perfect one. A human one. *We’ve all had that moment where a death rips open both grief and old family stories that no one wanted to touch.* The January law will not heal that. It will, though, decide the background rules of the game.
Talking about it now, in your own words, gives your descendants something the law can’t print in any article or paragraph: context. A sense that, behind the numbers and shares, there was someone trying, clumsily maybe, to keep the family story intact.
Does the new January law automatically give more to grandchildren?
Will my old will still be valid after the law changes?
What if I have children from different relationships?
Can I still give money while I’m alive to reduce inheritance tax?
Is it really necessary to talk about this with my family?
