If I make a will and leave vast fortunes to my unscrupulous nephew, and he offs me and is convicted of that, what happens to the money i’ve left to him?
Depends on the state. Wisconsin specifically disinherits people who are convicted of killing the testator.
ETA: Oops, you’re in the UK.
Here is (at least part of) a BBC story that indicates that under British law a murder may not inherit. Apparently the children of the murderer are also disinherited, although that may have changed in the years since the story was published.
Sorry to triple-post…
If anyone’s interested, Wisconsin’s disinheritance statute is 854.14. Searchable database here.
So, to answer the OP, the money would go to the next qualified beneficiary in line or, if none, to the state (I think).
Recommendations made by the Law Commission in its 2005 Report on The Forfeiture Rule and the Law of Succession were as follows:
As of December 2006 these proposals had been accepted by government but not thus far implemented by it.
Link.
In the U.S., it’s referred to as the “slayer’s rule,” and my memory is that it exists in all or almost all US jurisdictions. Under the slayer’s rule, the slayer is treated as pre-deceasing the testator (the guy with the will who the slayer killed). If you look through the examples Chez Guevara posted, that’s all they say: if you kill someone, you’re treated as though you died before him, so whatever you would have taken under the will (or by intestacy) goes elsewhere.
So if the slayer’s rule doesn’t currently exist in the UK, as Chez Guevara suggests, it appears that what’s being proposed mirrors US common law.
Honest question: would the will be respected even if the wording were such that even if A murders me, I still want him to inherit? What about if A assists me in a suicide? Okay, how about if A makes the decision to pull the plug at the hospital? I guess the law is the law, but would a probate judge tend to respect the will if the deceased allowed for the possibility? If not, then are there legal workarounds? Can the deceased leave a trust, but then the trust be to the benefit of the murderer? The trust isn’t the murderer, but then it would be to his sole benefit anyway.
What if the heir(s) of the murder is also an heir(s) of the deceased?
Basically, they inherit under the deceased (murder victim)‘s will (not the murderers’ – he never actually inherited the property).
This is an old mystery plot. Grandpa, a widower, has lots of money. Suddenly he gets engaged, to a woman young enough to produce new heirs. So Grandpa’s son or daughter murders him, knowing that even if they are caught, their children (the grandchildren) are still the only heirs to Grandpa’s money.
There’s an interesting op-edfrom more than ten years ago (NYT, requires free registration) that ponders these questions. I haven’t researched this and don’t really have time to right now, but the article does point out some of the inherent conflict in the policies at issue.
As to your trusts question, I don’t know the answer.
It would seem that it is possible for a convicted killer to benefit from a will made by his victim.
Here is a story concerning a man who killed his wife and was found not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. Although UK law prohibits someone convicted of manslaughter from inheriting the estate of his victim, the courts have discretion to override this restriction if the killer was afflicted by a mental disorder at the time of the incident.
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(This thread is 3 months old but its resurrection satisfies the criteria stated in The Rules, in that we are in GQ and the comment is substantive.)