Inheritance Tax Act 1984 section 92

Survivorship clauses

Section 92 deals with the inheritance tax treatment of survivorship clauses in wills or other arrangements, ensuring that dispositions are treated as taking effect from the date of death rather than at the end of the survivorship period.

• Where a will or other arrangement requires a beneficiary to survive another person for a specified period of up to six months, any dispositions taking effect at the end of that period are treated for inheritance tax purposes as having taken effect from the date of death.
• If the beneficiary does not survive the specified period, the dispositions that then take effect on their death (including those arising by operation of law) are also treated as having taken effect from the beginning of the period.
• Any trusts or arrangements governing the property or its income during the survivorship waiting period are effectively disregarded for inheritance tax purposes.
• The simplification does not apply to any distribution or application of property that actually occurs before the final dispositions take effect — those interim events remain subject to inheritance tax in the normal way.