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Intestate Succession

If a person dies without a will, the probate court must manage his estate through the applicable state intestate succession statute. The assets of the estate are passed on to the decedent’s heirs. The only people who are heirs are those who are qualified to receive based on the relevant state's definition.

Definition from Nolo’s Plain-English Law Dictionary

The method by which property is distributed when a person dies without a valid will. Each state's law provides that the property be distributed to the closest surviving relatives. In most states, the surviving spouse or registered domestic partner, children, parents, siblings, nieces and nephews, and next of kin inherit, in that order.

Definition provided by Nolo’s Plain-English Law Dictionary.

August 19, 2010, 5:18 pm

 

After Roberta's death, a probate court examined her valuable papers and determined that she left no valid will.  Robert was thus found to have died intestate.  Due to this finding of intestacy, the state's laws on intestate succession would determine which of Roberta's heirs could claim title to her house.

At the time of death, Roberta was not married and had no children.  Under the intestacy rules in Roberta's state, "[t]he property of a person who dies ab intestato without a spouse and children shall be transferred to the state, unless heirs can be found from the following list, in which case the first available set of heirs takes the property: parents, siblings of whole blood or their issue, half-siblings or their issue, grandparents, uncles and aunts of the whole blood, uncles and aunts of half blood."

Roberta's nephew inherited her house because he was the sole issue of Roberta's only sibling, who was herself no longer alive at the time of Roberta's death.

In the absence of an assignment of sites by the purchaser of a family cemetery plot before his death, the lineal descendants or parentelic relatives of the deceased purchaser have an easement in the unused sites in ground dedicated to family burials.

Fraser v. Tenney, 987 S.W.2d 796, 798 (Ky. App. 1998)