What Happens if I Die Without a Will?

If you die intestate (without a will), your property still must be distributed. By not leaving a valid will or trust, or transferring your property in some other way, such as through insurance, pension benefits, or joint ownership, you've in effect left it to state law to write your will for you. This doesn't mean that your money will go to the state. That happens only in very rare cases where you leave no surviving relatives, even very remote ones.

But it does mean that the state will make certain assumptions about where you'd like your money to go--assumptions with which you might not agree. In some states, intestate descent laws prefer “blood” over “marriage” by giving a share of your estate to your children, or if there are no children, to your parents, rather than to the surviving spouse. In other states, a surviving spouse inherits the entire intestate estate and the children (or parents) are entitled to nothing. In addition, the intestacy rules in most states provide no distributive shares of your estate for family members who are not related to you by blood, marriage or adoption. Stepchildren and unmarried domestic partners are typically excluded.

If you do not agree with the disposition imposed by the intestate laws of the state in which you reside, you need to have a will to specify who will benefit from your estate. Estate planning makes you the boss.