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Intestacy Laws
Have you ever wondered what happens to your property if you die without a
will? Some common misconceptions include everything being given to charity
or to the state. Another common misconception, with more serious
consequences, is the belief that a surviving spouse is always granted all
or substantially all of the deceased spouse's intestate estate.
In reality, much of the answer to these questions depends upon where you
permanently reside and which of your family members are living at the time
of your death, as these will determine which intestacy laws will apply in
order to determine the proper order of intestate succession. Some other factors that affect your intestate
estate's distribution include how the property is
owned, where the property is located, and even the family relationship
that your living relatives have with one another.
Making the answer to this question even more difficult is the fact that every
American state has its own laws that determine who will own the property of
every
intestate
decedent and none of the states follow the exact same system.
What is possibly the most important factor to understand is that these
intestacy laws
apply to every person.
With each state having its own unique laws, generalized statements about
the process are frequently inaccurate. The complexity of these laws
also makes written examples difficult to understand, as well as
inapplicable to most people. Although these laws apply to everyone,
it is incredibly difficult to find real examples of how they are applied.
Intestacy Calculators TM
For the first time, personally meaningful examples
of how the intestate laws operate can be found with the
Intestacy CalculatorsTM listed below, which are the
first interactive programs that interpret the laws of intestacy based upon
individual family and financial circumstances.
The complexity of each
individual program is determined entirely by each state's individual intestacy
laws. Some of the more interesting Intestacy Calculators are
Arkansas,
California,
Missouri, and
Texas.
However,
as none of the states have the same body of laws, none of the Intestacy CalculatorsTM are the same and it is interesting to try different states just to see the
differences. You can also see which legal concepts are applied by specific
states by using the State
Summaries program.
In addition to the Intestacy
CalculatorsTM and the interactive State Summaries program, some other useful
information is found with the Federal Estate Tax
Calculator and the written examples of the differences between a
Traditional Family and a Blended
Family according to the intestacy laws of different states.
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