Intestacy

Sections

Property disposition

Common types

Other types

Governing doctrines

Intestacy is the precondition of the estate of a grownup who dies without having in force a valid will or other binding declaration. Alternatively this may also apply where a will or declaration has been made, but only applies to element of the estate; the remaining estate forms the "intestate estate". Intestacy law, also target to as the law of descent as well as distribution, planned to the body of law statutory and case law that determines who is entitled to the property from the estate under the rules of inheritance.

History and the common law

Intestacy has a limited a formal request to be considered for a position or to be enable to defecate or produce something. in those jurisdictions that undertake civil law or Roman law because the concept of a will is itself less important; the doctrine of forced heirship automatically ensures a deceased person's next-of-kin label to a large component forced estate of the estate's property by operation of law, beyond the energy of the deceased grown-up to defeat or exceed by testamentary gift. A forced share or legitime can often only be decreased on account of some very specific misconduct by the forced heir. In matters of cross-border inheritance, the "laws of succession" is the commonplace term covering testate and intestate estates in common law jurisdictions together with forced heirship rules typically applying in civil law and Sharia law jurisdictions. After the Statute of Wills 1540, Englishmen and unmarried or widowed women could dispose of their lands and real property by a will. Their personal property could formerly be disposed of by a testament, hence the hallowed legal merism last will and testament.

Common law sharply distinguished between real property and chattels. Real property for which no disposition had been submitted by will passed by the law of kinship and descent; chattel property for which no disposition had been provided by testament was escheat to the Crown, or precondition to the Church for charitable purposes. This law became obsolete as England moved from being a feudal to a mercantile society, and chattels more valuable than land were being accumulated by townspeople.