Photo by Artem Zhukov on Unsplash
You’ve had the wedding. The cards are opened, the thank-you notes are (mostly) written, and somewhere between the honeymoon photos and real life, it hits you: you’re now legally and financially tied to another person. Nobody hands you a manual for what that actually means for your money.
Marriage changes more about your finances than most people realise — not just the romantic stuff, but tax codes, pension nominations, wills, and who’s liable for what if things go wrong. None of it is complicated once someone explains it properly. Most of it just gets ignored because nobody tells you it needs doing.
This is that list. Not everything needs doing this week, but everything here is worth knowing about — and a few things have actual deadlines or free money attached, so they’re worth prioritising.
Tell HMRC and update your name (if you’re changing it)
If one of you is changing your surname, you need to update it with HMRC, your bank, your employer’s payroll, your GP, your passport, and your driving licence. HMRC won’t automatically know — you tell them through your Government Gateway account or by writing to them directly.
This matters more than it sounds. If your payslip name doesn’t match your HMRC records, it can cause issues with your tax code or pension contributions down the line. It’s a boring admin afternoon, but do it early rather than discovering a mismatch two years later when something goes wrong.
Check if you’re due the Marriage Allowance
This is the one piece of genuinely free money in this checklist, and most couples who qualify don’t claim it.
Marriage Allowance lets one partner transfer £1,260 of their personal tax-free allowance to the other, if one of you earns below the personal allowance threshold (currently £12,570) and the other is a basic-rate taxpayer (earning between £12,571 and £50,270). It’s worth up to £252 a year, and you can backdate a claim for up to four previous tax years if you were eligible and didn’t claim.
You apply directly through gov.uk — it takes a few minutes, and there’s no reason to pay anyone to do this for you.
Decide how you’re going to handle money together
There’s no “correct” way to do this, despite what every finance influencer tells you. The three common setups:
| Setup | How it works | Works well when |
|---|---|---|
| Fully joint | One joint account, both incomes in, all bills and spending from it | You both earn similarly and trust full transparency |
| Joint for bills, separate for personal | Joint account for rent/mortgage/bills, separate accounts for personal spending | You want shared responsibility without tracking every coffee |
| Fully separate | No joint account, split bills by agreed proportion or 50/50 | Big income gaps, or you simply prefer financial independence |
None of these is more “married” than the others. The mistake isn’t picking the wrong one — it’s not talking about it at all and drifting into an arrangement neither of you actually chose.
Review your pension beneficiaries — this one actually matters
Here’s a misconception worth clearing up: getting married does not automatically make your spouse the beneficiary of your pension.
Most workplace pensions and personal pensions (including SIPPs — self-invested personal pensions) ask you to nominate a beneficiary, usually called an “expression of wish.” If you nominated an ex-partner, a parent, or nobody at all before you got married, that nomination doesn’t update itself. The pension provider pays out based on what’s on file, not on who you’re married to.
Log into each pension you hold — workplace and personal — and update your expression of wish form. It usually takes five minutes online and it’s genuinely one of the most overlooked tasks on this entire list.
Write a will (yes, even now)
If you die without a will in England and Wales, intestacy rules decide who inherits — and a surviving spouse doesn’t automatically get everything, especially if you have children or other assets. In Scotland, the rules differ again.
Getting married does revoke any existing will you had before the wedding (in England, Wales and Northern Ireland), unless the will was specifically written in contemplation of the marriage. So if you had a will before you got married, check whether it’s still valid — it may well not be.
This isn’t about expecting anything to happen. It’s about making sure that if something does, your money goes where you’d actually want it to, not where a 150-year-old legal default sends it.
Check your mortgage, insurance and existing debts
A few practical checks worth doing in the first few months:
- Life insurance and income protection: if you’re both financially dependent on each other’s income (rent, mortgage, bills), check whether either of you has cover, and whether it’s enough now that someone else relies on your income.
- Existing debts: marriage doesn’t automatically make you liable for your partner’s pre-existing debts (student loans, credit cards, overdrafts). But once you open a joint account or take out a joint mortgage, you become “financially associated” on your credit file, which can affect both your credit scores.
- Home insurance and bills: if you’re moving in together or combining households, check policies aren’t duplicated and that both names are on relevant accounts.
If either of you is worried about existing debt and how marriage affects it, Citizens Advice has clear, free guidance specific to your situation.
Talk about pensions and retirement — together, not separately
This is the one couples put off longest because it feels abstract. But pensions are usually the single largest asset either of you will build, and a big mismatch between the two of you can cause real problems decades from now.
Worth a conversation:
- Are you both in a workplace pension, and are you both contributing enough to get your employer’s full matching contribution? Not doing this is leaving part of your salary on the table.
- If one of you takes time out of work (parental leave, career break, part-time hours), their pension contributions will likely slow or stop. Is that something you plan around together, or does it just happen?
- Do you know roughly what each of you has, combined? A quick MoneyHelper pension check gives you a starting point.
You don’t need a joint financial plan drawn up this month. You need to know where you both stand, so surprises don’t show up at 55.
The bottom line
- This week: check your Marriage Allowance eligibility at gov.uk and claim it if you qualify — it’s free money and takes minutes.
- This month: log into every pension you hold (workplace and personal) and update your expression of wish / beneficiary nomination.
- This month: check whether your existing will is still valid, or write one if you don’t have one — don’t let intestacy rules decide for you.
- Within three months: have an actual conversation about how you’re handling joint money, not just an assumption that drifted into place.
- Ongoing: revisit your combined pension position once a year — not to panic about it, just to know where you both stand.
None of this needs doing in a weekend. But a surprising amount of it is free, quick, and only gets more awkward to sort out the longer it’s left.
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