Also known as: legal successions · succession · intestate succession
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
Transfer of a decedent's property to heirs according to statutory rules of intestate succession rather than by will. The shares are determined by applying the law that would govern if the designated ancestor had died intestate owning the property.
Layla Lane left a trust providing a class gift of farmland to her descendants without specifying shares. When the interest vested, Lucia Lopez and Luke Latham were the only living descendants. The property passed to them in the proportions they would have received if Layla had died intestate at that moment.
Liam Larson died without a will owning a coastal cottage. Lillian Locke, his only surviving child, received title by operation of law. No deed from Liam was required for the transfer to take effect.
Lattice Systems was formed under the Model Business Corporation Act. The articles contained no contrary provision, so the corporation acquired perpetual duration and succession in its corporate name, allowing it to hold and transfer property indefinitely without dissolution upon any member's death.
Lucy Liu, domiciled in State B, inherited land located in State A from her aunt. A court in State C applied the totality of State A's law, including its choice-of-law rules, to determine the validity and effect of the legal succession to the immovable.
Linden Bank received a written instruction to pay a sum to Lighthouse Shipping or, if that company no longer existed, to its legal successors. Because the instruction named alternative payees rather than successive ones, the instrument qualified as an order under the statute.
After Marco's death without a will, Lena sought a share of the estate for her son Diego on the basis of DNA evidence alone. The court required formal lifetime paternity establishment under state intestacy rules before recognizing Diego's claim through legal succession.
Deta Mona Trimble is the illegitimate daughter of Jessie Trimble and Sherman Gordon. Trimble and Gordon lived together in Chicago with Deta Mona from 1970 until Gordon died in 1974 as the victim of a homicide. On January 2, 1973, the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, entered a paternity order finding Gordon to be the father of Deta Mona and ordering him to pay fifteen dollars per week for her support. Gordon thereafter supported Deta Mona in accordance with the paternity order and openly acknowledged her as his child. Gordon died intestate at the age of twenty-eight, leaving an estate consisting only of a 1974 Plymouth automobile worth approximately twenty-five hundred dollars. Shortly after Gordon's death, Trimble, as the mother and next friend of Deta Mona, filed a petition for letters of administration, determination of heirship, and declaratory relief in the Probate Division of the Circuit Court of Cook County. That court entered an order determining heirship, identifying as the only heirs of Gordon his father Joseph Gordon, his mother Ethel King, and his brother, two sisters, and a half brother. The Circuit Court excluded Deta Mona on the authority of section twelve of the Illinois Probate Act. The Illinois Supreme Court affirmed the decision of the Circuit Court on the authority of its earlier decision in In re Estate of Karas. The United States Supreme Court noted probable jurisdiction to consider the arguments that section twelve violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by invidiously discriminating on the basis of illegitimacy and sex.
View caseLegal succession occurs by operation of intestacy statutes when a person dies without a valid will. Testamentary succession occurs when a will validly directs the distribution of property. The former applies default statutory shares. The latter follows the testator's expressed intent.
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No. Title passes automatically by operation of law under the applicable intestacy statute. A fiduciary may later execute a deed only to perfect record title.
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When the instrument creating the class gift to descendants or heirs does not specify distribution shares, the property is divided among living class members according to the intestacy statute that would apply if the designated ancestor had died owning the property at the time of vesting.
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Yes. Under the Model Business Corporation Act, every corporation has perpetual duration and succession in its corporate name unless the articles provide otherwise.
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