![\"Martin](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/plaerwjpg-6672566.jpg\" "\\"Martin")
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Martin Lewis said there are great financial benefits to being married in some situations (Image: ITV)<\/p>\n
Personal finance guru Martin Lewis gave a warning to all couples who live together but are not married. Speaking on his ITV show, the expert was asked what the most important thing to get ready in 2026 to make sure finances are in order.<\/p>\n
On his show he was asked: \u201cMartin, if you had to prioritise, which would you sort first: Will\/ Power of Attorney, or pensions\/tax\/inheritance? And why?\u201d Mr Lewis said that Power of Attorney was the most important<\/a> – but explained that there are a key issue around marriage and the potential risks to inheritance for your partner and family should the worst happen.<\/p>\n Mr Lewis: replied \u201cThat is a tough one. So first of all, let\u2019s say we\u2019ll take inheritance for a second, only about 6% to 8% of the population their estates pay inheritance tax. It\u2019s something far more people worry<\/a> about than actually affects them. If you\u2019re married and you\u2019re leaving your property to one of your descendants, then if you do it right, you can leave up to \u00a31 million with no inheritance tax.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019re not married, it\u2019s \u00a3500,000, so that might not even be an issue for you in the first place. It isn\u2019t for many people. Do some more reading on that.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr Lewis has previously spoken about the benefits of marriage to inheritance<\/a> on his podcast – and issued a warning for those who are not. He has said they are \u2018substantial\u2019 and added: \u201cWhen we talk about marriage it applies to anyone who is married or who has a legal civil partnership.<\/p>\n \u201cBut this does not apply to you if you are just cohabiting\u201cA legal recognition of your relationship and civil partnership is also a legal recognition of your relationship without some of the, some might say, paternalistic religious overhang that a marriage has.\u201d<\/p>\n Martin Lewis\u2019 2 big inheritance tax marriage benefits:Assets left to your husband or wife aren\u2019t taxedYou pass on your inheritance tax allowance to your spouse – which then goes to your children.<\/p>\n Mr Lewis explained: \u201cSo the two big inheritance tax benefits. First of all your spouse won\u2019t pay inheritance tax on anything you leave to them. When you die any money, any property, any assets left to your spouse is automatically exempt from inheritance tax.<\/p>\n \u201cAn even more important inheritance tax boon of marriage is you can pass on your unused inheritance tax balance to your spouse. So in plainspeak you don\u2019t pay inheritance tax on the first \u00a3325,000 you leave when you die. Above that if you\u2019re leaving your main residence to your direct descendents, so your children or grandchildren or step children, you usually get another \u00a3175,000 on top. So that\u2019s \u00a3500,000 that you can leave without paying tax on it.<\/p>\n \u201cSo if you leave everything to your spouse when you die, then you haven\u2019t used any of those allowances and as they\u2019re unused they get passed on to your spouse. That means when your spouse passes away their allowance and yours, which means if you\u2019re leaving the main property, they can then leave a million pounds they can pass on without paying any inheritance tax. That\u2019s a huge benefit.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd that\u2019s why it\u2019s often worth looking at getting married or a civil partnership which counts in exactly the same way.\u201d<\/p>\n The personal finance expert said that a good example was in a case where two people had \u00a31 million in assets including a property. He said: \u201cWhen the first one of you dies if you\u2019re not married you leave everything to the other one. Well you\u2019ve just used, because your stuff is worth \u00a3500,000, \u00a3500,000 of your inheritance allowance. So you have no allowance to pass on to them.<\/p>\n \u201cYour partner now has a million pounds worth of assets when they die their inheritance tax allowance is \u00a3500,000. So if they pass that on to your child that\u2019s \u00a3500,000 which would pay inheritance tax at 40 per cent which is a \u00a3200,000 inheritance tax bill.<\/p>\n \u201cLet\u2019s contrast that to our married couple who have a million pounds worth of assets. The first one dies, all their assets go to their spouse. Their unused inheritance tax allowance goes to their spouse because they\u2019re passing it to a spouse it didn\u2019t count.<\/p>\n \u201cSo then when the second one dies they get to leave the entire million pounds to their children inheritance tax free. Saving \u00a3200,000.\u201c<\/p>\n To listen to the podcast in full click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n On the issue of Power of Attorney Mr Lewis said: “Power of Attorney says if I were to lose my faculties, then I will nominate other people who can look after my finances and my health and wellbeing for me. I\u2019ve had a Power of Attorney for 15 years even though I\u2019ve got no foreseeability of losing my faculties.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you don\u2019t have a Power of Attorney in place<\/a>, and you were to have an accident tomorrow so you couldn\u2019t look after yourself with your faculties gone, or a severe stroke, and you\u2019re a young person\u2014because people think it\u2019s only for old people, it\u2019s not\u2014then it is frankly a nightmare to go through the process of someone else trying to take over your finances. Meanwhile, they may not be able to pay your mortgage<\/a> for you, or pay for any treatments for you, or pay for anything you need.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you die, intestate rules mean it will probably go to those people you love. Your pension, you\u2019ll hopefully work out. Sorting out tax, it\u2019s important. But your Power of Attorney is the one that tomorrow, if you haven\u2019t got one, God forbid, you could really need. So that\u2019s the one I\u2019d do first.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Martin Lewis said there are great financial benefits to being married in some situations (Image: ITV) Personal finance…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":232640,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[1052,138,246,18262,138092,33343,111,139,69,244,245,36418],"class_list":["post-232639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-benefits","tag-business","tag-finance","tag-inheritance-tax","tag-marriage-benefits","tag-martin-lewis","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance","tag-power-of-attorney"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232639\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}