Intestate Succession and Heirship: every key term you need (+ practice quiz)
25 flashcard terms for Wills and Trusts Topic 1, written to match the course framework. Study them here, then drill them as interactive flashcards, or test yourself with the 15-question quiz — free, no account needed.
The default statutory scheme that distributes a decedent's probate property when there is no valid will, when a will fails to dispose of everything, or when a will is denied probate.
Partial intestacy
The situation in which a valid will disposes of only some of the estate, so the remaining probate assets pass to the decedent's heirs under the intestacy statute of the governing state.
Heir
A person designated by the intestacy statute to take a decedent's property at death. Living people have no heirs, only heirs apparent, because heirship is fixed at the moment of death.
Probate estate
The property that passes either by a valid will or through intestate succession under court supervision, as distinguished from nonprobate assets that pass by contract, survivorship, or trust.
Uniform Probate Code
A model statute drafted by the Uniform Law Commission that many states have adopted in whole or in part; it supplies the modern default rules for intestacy, will formalities, and estate administration.
Surviving spouse intestate share
Under the modern Uniform Probate Code approach the spouse takes the entire intestate estate when all descendants are also descendants of the spouse and the spouse has no other descendants; blended families reduce the share.
Descendant
A person in the direct downward bloodline of the decedent, including children, grandchildren, and more remote issue, whether the relationship arises by birth or by legal adoption.
Ancestor
A person in the direct upward bloodline such as a parent or grandparent, who takes in intestacy only when the decedent leaves no surviving descendants under most state schemes.
Collateral relative
A blood relative who is neither a descendant nor an ancestor, such as a sibling, niece, aunt, or cousin, and who takes only after closer classes of takers are exhausted.
Strict per stirpes
A distribution method that divides the estate into shares at the first generation below the decedent, whether or not anyone at that level survives, with each dropped share passing down that bloodline.
Modern per stirpes
Also called per capita with representation, this method makes the first division at the nearest generation with at least one living member, then drops deceased members' shares down their own lines.
Per capita at each generation
The Uniform Probate Code default that pools the shares of all deceased takers at each generation and divides them equally among the takers at the next level, so equally related people take equal amounts.
Parentelic system
A method of finding remote takers that moves outward through parentelas, first descendants, then parents and their issue, then grandparents and their issue, until a living relative is located.
Degree of relationship system
An alternative approach to remote heirs that counts steps up to a common ancestor and back down, awarding the estate to the relative of the nearest civil degree, sometimes with a parentelic tiebreaker.
Laughing heir
A remote relative who inherits despite having no real relationship with the decedent; the Uniform Probate Code cuts off inheritance beyond grandparents and their descendants to prevent this result.
Escheat
The passage of an intestate estate to the state treasury when a diligent search reveals no surviving spouse and no relative within the statutory degrees of kinship who can take.
Half blood
A relative who shares only one common parent with the decedent. The Uniform Probate Code treats half-blood siblings exactly like whole-blood siblings, though a minority of states halve the share.
Adopted child inheritance
Formal adoption generally severs inheritance rights from the biological family and creates full rights in the adoptive family, subject to stepparent adoption exceptions that preserve the tie to one genetic parent.
Equitable adoption
A doctrine allowing a child raised as one's own to inherit from the foster or stepparent when there was an unperformed agreement or promise to adopt, usually proved by clear and convincing evidence.
Posthumous child
A child conceived before but born after the decedent's death, who inherits as though living at death if born within the statutory period, commonly two hundred eighty days, which raises a rebuttable presumption.
Posthumously conceived child
A child created from stored genetic material after a parent's death, who under the Uniform Probate Code may inherit only if the parent consented in a signed record and the child is in utero within a fixed window.
Advancement
A lifetime gift to an heir treated as a prepayment of the intestate share. The Uniform Probate Code counts it only if a contemporaneous writing by the donor or an acknowledgment by the heir says so.
Hotchpot
The accounting step that adds the value of advancements back into the intestate estate, divides the enlarged pot among the heirs, and then subtracts each advancement from the recipient's computed share.
Simultaneous death rule
A survivorship provision under which a claimant who cannot be shown by clear and convincing evidence to have outlived the decedent by one hundred twenty hours is treated as having predeceased.
Slayer rule
The principle barring a person who feloniously and intentionally kills the decedent from taking any benefit; the killer is treated as having predeceased, and a constructive trust reaches nonprobate transfers.