The death of a loved one is a challenging, painful experience. Even when an individual reaches an advanced age or has struggled with medical challenges for years, their surviving family members may have a hard time letting go after they pass.
Concerns about the estate of the deceased individual may serve to intensify grief and family conflict after someone dies. Ideally, people establish thorough estate plans long before their passing. Interested parties can then easily determine who should inherit what from the estate by reviewing the document. Without a will, estate administration becomes a much more complicated process. People may be unsure of who has the right to inherit.
Understanding who might be an heir of an estate can be beneficial for those hoping to inherit and also those assisting with the probate process after someone dies.
The law identifies specific heirs
Technically, people who create their own estate plans have the authority to choose any beneficiaries they want. They can leave the vast majority of their property to a charitable cause or to a romantic partner whom they never married. However, if a person dies without an estate plan, then the law governs who inherits their property. Someone who dies without a will dies intestate, and state regulations carefully outline intestate succession rules.
Typically, surviving spouses have relatively strong rights in an intestate succession scenario. Surviving children may also be heirs with a right to inherit from the estate. Generally speaking, surviving spouses and surviving children must split the contents of an estate. Exactly how they divide the estate depends largely on whether the surviving spouse is also a parent of the surviving children.
In cases where a person has a surviving spouse but no surviving children or surviving children and no surviving spouse, their children or spouse may inherit the entirety of the estate. If an individual passes without a spouse or children to inherit from the estate, then intestate succession laws allow more distant family members rights as heirs.
Parents often inherit the property of their children who died without spouses or children of their own. Siblings and other family members may inherit property in cases where there are no immediate family members or surviving parents to inherit from the estate. Personal representatives administering intestate estates may need to learn about the law and ensure that they take appropriate steps to identify heirs.
Proper estate planning can prevent intestate succession scenarios. Without an estate plan, state law ultimately determines who inherits the contents of an intestate estate. Heirs are typically close family members, as opposed to friends and others without a legal or biological relationship to a testator.