Say you get convicted of a serious offense, one to put you away for life. Also presume that before this you inherited a large sum of money from a parent, other relative, etc. Finally, presume you have no living relatives at all- you’re a 3rd generation only child. What would be done with your money? Would the government confiscate it upon your conviction? Or would they just let it sit in the bank until you finally died in prison?
The first thing they do is move your effects to General Questions from About This Message Board.
You are still entitled to leave any money rightfully yours by will, and it can be left to anyone or any cause you choose, not delimited to (in this case nonexistent) blood relations. If you fail to do so, on your death it is treated like any other estate of an intestate deceased with no known heirs – it escheats to the state. In point of fact, it is typically held by an office within the State Treasurer or equivalent’s agency for a given number of years, while advertisements are run for heirs. Only when that time has run out and no prospective heirs have responded does it get deposited into the state treasury.
Money rightfully yours is not confiscated on your conviction. (You may end up being sued by your victim or his heirs, and lose it in a judgment.) Naturally, this does not apply to moneys that are “fruits of your crime”, i.e., gained as a result of what you were convicted of. I mention this because it’s the typical way in which a convicted felon has a large sum of money, though in your OP you specified that you were speaking of an inheritance.
In some jurisdictions/prison systems you can be forced to pay the costs of your imprisonment.
Aside from that, and possibility of having your assets stripped via a lawsuit by one of your victims, you can write a will and give your money to anyone or anything.
Long story short, your incarceration is basically irrelevant, barring any (somewhat uncommon) requirement that you pay for your incarceration.
It’s still your money. And you can spend it if you like. I once saw a prisoner receive a ten thousand dollar check for his prison account - you can buy a lot of candy bars with that.
In most jurisdictions you also cannot inherit if you killed the person from whom you inherited. Don’t want any perverse incentives for murder.
Yes, if there are any people who are the victims of your criminal actions, and who therefore could sue you in tort law, the fact that you have substantial assets may make it worth their while to sue you. Usually criminals don’t have any significant assets, apart possibly from the proceeds of their crime, so nobody bothers to sue, but this happened to O.J. Simpson – even though he wasn’t convicted of a crime, because the standard of proof is less in a tort action.
Aren’t prisoners generally prohibited from profiting from their crimes?
How is withdrawing $10,000 of your own savings profiting from your crime?
Oh, that kind of account!
I thought he had gotten paid for a story (an ‘account’) of his life focusing on his prison term, which would be directly related to his crime.
Very few people have no heirs at all. There are whole TV programmes about companies that hunt down heirs for people who die intestate. so the money would go to someone even if you didn’t specify a friend or charity in your will. Probably best not to make that friend someone who’s in prison and could kill you for the money, though.
Good news! I’m willing to be your heir. PM me and we’ll work out the details.
Good point. Certainly if you’ve ever made out a will, then barring the death of all possible heirs by will and their heirs, plus all possible heirs in intestacy and their heirs, you do have possible heirs.
In general the unknown distant cousin trope so beloved of fiction writers does not apply, though, since it only applies to something thazt must pass to the next heir, however distant, like a title of nobility, and rarely entails any attached property (pun intended). Typically the intestate law requires tracing out heirs to the Nth degree of affinity – second cousins and those related to the same degree, Kevin Bacon style, such as first cousins twice removed. Do any Dopers at Law who work with estates have access to a typical “degrees of affinity” chart to make this clearer, along with cites for what various jurisdictions deem heirs in intestacy?
This made me think of La Ballade des Dalton, a Lucky Luke movie in which the Dalton brothers are visited in prison by an attorney who tells them their uncle Henry, recently deceased (by hanging) has bequeathed them his whole fortune. There is however a catch: they must track down and kill all the jurors and the judge who condemned him to death. I’m guessing such a condition wouldn’t be allowed in an actual will. 
I just took a property final this week, so I can answer for WV. If you die with no spouse, children, parents, or brothers and sisters, then they look to your grandparents and their descendants (aunts, uncles, cousins, once-removed) then they go to your great-grandparents and their descendants (great aunts and uncles, second cousins, second cousins once removed). If there are still no heirs after that (and that would be a very rare occasion), then it escheats.
Before 1992, this search continued forever up your family tree, King Ralph style. My professor drafted the law in '92 and said that the reason for limiting it was that if you went beyond that, chances are the person never knew you and they didn’t want “laughing heirs” who were glad that you had died.
That’s also how it used to work under English common law - in theory there was always an heir, and it didn’t just apply to titles etc. However, it was changed by the English Law of Property Act, 1925, which created a cut-off point (can’t remember exactly what it was).
The enactment of this change in the law of inheritance in the 1925 Act was a key plot point in the Dorothy L. Sayers novel, Unnatural Death.
LPA 1925 and the LRA 2002 IIRC also had a cut off time for any heirs to come forward (3 years I think, but its been a long time since I did Land Law so I could be very wrong).
In England and Wales it’s limited to first cousins. In Scotland to second cousins.
I don’t have any heirs, of course I don’t have any money so the two cancel each other out 