“All to mother.” – Trans Gender Issues and Your Will
This is one of the shortest wills in history, written by a soldier over a hundred years ago. He didn’t think it through though. What if one day his mother decided to swap gender and became his father?
If you change your gender, you may be putting your inheritance at risk. If your parents’ will says, “I leave my second-best Bentley to my son”, then the son may miss out if he decides that he is really a daughter. The problem arises because a description in a will when it is first written then applies when the person making that will dies, often many years later. So if this son’s sister also changes gender and becomes male, then he will now be the son, and he will inherit the Bentley.
The Gender Recognition Act 2004 provides that anyone who changes gender can apply for a Gender Recognition Certificate and this will, in law, apply to all purposes. I don’t suppose anyone could see a future issue with wills.
Of course, such a problem is going to be very rare, and it can be easily dealt with by adding a name –my son , Jack Smith, and in a properly drafted will , care will be taken to make sure that every beneficiary is carefully described.
The problems more often arise in home-made wills when a parent doesn’t think it is necessary to be too careful about a precise description of her only daughter, but who knows what the future has in store?