disinheritance

Disinheritance means to prevent someone from receiving any of your property after your death. Disinheritance occurs when the testator takes steps to make sure that a specific person is excluded from inheriting anything from the property. This can be done either by excluding someone from the will or by including a disinheritance clause in the will. 

Cases such as this one from Oklahoma, explain that “disinheritance is the act by which a person deprives his heir of an inheritance who without such act would inherit, or the act by which the owner of an estate deprives a person of the right to inherit it who would otherwise be his heir.”

[Last reviewed in July of 2021 by the Wex Definitions Team]

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