Don’t need answer fast. This was inspired by a rerun of ‘Forensic Files.’
Guy with a fairly large estate thinks his son doesn’t deserve anything, so he has changed his will so that his caregiver will receive everything. However, she’s already tapping into his resources while he’s still in pretty decent shape. Of course, he finds out, and is obviously not happy. *Now, he’s in the process of taking her out of the will, so she goes ahead and takes him out.
Well, it doesn’t take long before the evidence points to the caregiver, and she is subsequently tried and convicted. Under the ‘Slayer Rule,’ she can no longer inherit. But who does? Would it go to her next of kin, or would the court rule that the existing will was invalid, and thus default to intestate succession?
*Possibly he has already, but for the sake of the question, assume she’s still the sole beneficiary.
But without a will that can apply, it would likely go on to more distant relations if and when they can be traced.
Back in the eighties I was in Michigan and there was a story about a guy who lived at the YMCA, He died without a will and appatently no assets. But when a lawyer was commissioned to go through his stuff it was found he had investment account and bank books, with a total of around a quarter of a million dollars. Relations were traced and some first cousins were found. They knew him but had no contact and turned the money down. Second cousins were found, two I think, and they accepted the money. It’s kind of like figuring who is the heir to a monarchy. The story was on “Unsolved Mysteries” because he had keys to what were believed to be public lockboxes, where more of his stuff might have been stashed.
It will depend on the law of the jurisdiction where it happens.
My guess is that it would go to the son. If deceased made a will, leaving it all to the caregiver, with no alternative heirs in the event she predeceases him, then the will fails. My guess is that ter heirs don’t come into it if she predeceases him. Intestacy rules kick in, and son would be closest next of kin.
Just my guess, commenting on a fictional situation. Anyone wanting to make a will with intention to exclude someone should go see a good lawyer practising in the area of wills and estates, in the relevant jurisdiction.
You know the perpetrator or victim where someone killed someone to get an inheritance? TV crimes shows notwithstanding, that surely can’t be a common occurrence.
What if the will is only partially invalid? What if the deceased had said “Half goes to my caregiver and half to my son”? Would the son then get all of it? What if there were other beneficiaries named, but only for specific items (“John gets my baseball card collection, Mary gets my car, and my caregiver Natasha Fatale gets everything else”)? There, you can’t split up the rest proportionally, because it’s not clear what proportion the baseball card collection is relative to the car. Do the other beneficiaries get what’s stated for them, with the rest going to the intestate rules?
“He died intestate…”
“Ooooh, must have been painful.”
IANAL but… My guess …The will probably is not invalid. Simply the bit where “…all my assets except … goes to the caregiver” is not allowed to happen. I would guess this is similar to “I leave my money to my friend Bob” but Bob predeceases and it’s left to Bob, not Bob and his heirs. (Not “per stirpes”) Any side bequests are paid out. Then presumably, there is a pile of money left over that is not accounted for in the will. Presumably the intestate law kicks in for this, and it goes to the son, unless the will specifically says “nothing to the son”. Then it would be the next closest relative(s).
So far as I recall, the common-law rule is that the will is administered as if the killer, and everyone who might claim through them, had all died before the testator. So if the will says “half to caregiver, half to son” and says absolutely nothing about what happens if either caregiver or son have already died, then the will is administered, half the estate goes to the son, the bequest of the other half simply fails since the killer’s own heirs, next of kin, etc are taken to have died, and the other half of the estate is distributed according to the rules that apply on intestacy.
Ah, good point, a beneficiary predeceasing is a much less exotic condition than a murder, and that possibility would lead to prudent testators, and their lawyers, putting in suitable conditionals, and to the courts to establish procedures for if the conditionals weren’t in place.
Nearly all professionally-drafted wills will include a residual clause (after the specific legacies, the rest of my estate goes my children/the Cats and Dogs Home/whoever) and, if a specific legacy fails for any reason, then those assets form part of the residue of the estate and the Cats and Dogs Home gets a bit more than they otherwise would have.
Of course, it can be that the residual bequest itself fails (e.g. the Cats and Dogs Home has ceased to exist) in which case the assets that would have gone to the Cats and Dogs Home are distributed as they would have been if the deceased had not made a will.
There’s specific wording that real lawyers use. A bequest per stirpes means that if the beneficiary is predeceased, the amount is split equally among the chidlren/heirs of the beneficiary. (Any of them dead, their share goes to their offspring, rinse and repeat).
There’s also per capita where anyone who died, their heirs are SOL and the remaining beneficiaries split the amount as if the dead person was not mentioned.
I presume the law against benefiting from a crime means the heirs of the caretaker do not get anything either.
AFAIK if a will is invald you go back to the previous one, but the caretaker bit does not invaldate the will - it simply removes any benefit the caretaker gets. So the home for Cats and Dogs, and the home for indigent Bikers, for example, would still get their $1000. I presume money left over after all the bequests falls to the intestate rules. Usually (!!) these are 50% plus the house to the spouse, 50% split among the children. No spouse, it’s all split among the children. I assume, per stirpes - so any child died, then the grandchildren, etc. etc.
I guess a more intersting question is - what if the will specifically says “to my ne’er-do-well son Eric I leave nothing”? I suppose then the executor would have to search for next next-in-line heir.
A will that just says “to my ne’er-do-well son Eric I leave nothing” is the same as no will at all, since iyt fails to dispose of any of the estate. So the estate will pass to the person(s) entitled on intestacy who, depending on the facts, could well be Eric. If the testator wants to disinherit the next-of-kin, he has to bequeath the estate to someone else.
As I recall from some article about wills, there was a warning about - if you want to cut off an immediate heir, you should specifically say so and preferrably explain why. Or, one suggestion was to make a token bequest - “to my useless lazy so Eric I leave $1,000 which will probably last him a day”. Otherwise the cut off relative could argue that due to dementia they’d simply forgotten about them and try to have the will invalidated. They could also argue “undue influence” to invalidate the will if there were no murder, that the force can have a strong influence on the weekminded and the caretaker poisoned the father’s mind against the son.
Classic case was Joan Crawford, who specifically left her adopted faughter nothing in her will “…for reasons she knows full well.” That didn’t turn out so well… Joan and the phrase Mommie Dearest is a byword for child abuse nowadays. Possibly Christina made a decent amount from the book and film to compensate.
So when the bequest to the caretaker in the OP is invalidated, if the son is specifically cut out of the will, then presumably the son might have a pretty good case to argue undue influence, particularly since he was the full heir in the previous will and the caretaker had daily interaction with the dead rich guy; if he succeeds, then the will is invalidated and the previous one takes effect. If he does not challenge it or fails, then presumably the un-directed leftover estate goes to the nearest heir(s) not specifically exclluded using the intestate process.
(Also an interesting question is how the will is worded for other bequests. My uneducated guess…
If it says " $1000 to the Home for Wayward Cats and Dogs" they get $1000. "If it says “one tenth of my estate to …” then they get 1/10. The rest shared via intestate rules. If it says “9/10 of my estate to my caretaker Nurse Ratchett, the rest to the Home for Wayward Cats and Dogs” then presumably when Nurse Ratchett’s share is invalidated and not paid out, the complete estate goes for kibble and catnip.)