Who Inherits If You Die Without a Will? Intestacy Laws by State

Most people assume that if they die without a will, everything simply goes to their spouse. In a majority of states, that is not what happens. And dying without a will is not a fringe case: in Caring.com's 2025 Wills and Estate Planning Study, only about one in four American adults said they had one, which leaves most families relying on the default rules below. When you leave no valid will, your property passes by "intestate succession," a default set of rules each state writes for exactly this situation. There is no federal probate or inheritance code, so who inherits, and how much, is decided state by state, and the rules diverge sharply, especially for families with children from more than one relationship.

This study compiles the intestacy rules for all 50 states and the District of Columbia, drawn from each jurisdiction's primary statute. It covers the shares a surviving spouse and children receive under the scenarios that come up most often: a spouse with children of the marriage, a spouse with a child from another relationship, a spouse with surviving parents but no children, and children with no surviving spouse. The single clearest finding: in 31 of these 51 jurisdictions, a child from another relationship shrinks what the surviving spouse inherits. In most states the spouse never takes the entire estate once any children survive; in these 31, a child from another relationship makes the spouse's share specifically smaller than it would be if every child were shared.

A boundary first. Settled Estate is not a law firm and this report is not legal advice. These are the DEFAULT rules for property that goes through probate, a court process whose cost and timeline also vary widely by state. They are simplified for comparison and do not model everything: assets that pass outside probate by titling or beneficiary designation (jointly held property, payable-on-death accounts, retirement plans, life insurance), a spouse's elective or forced share, or homestead, family-allowance, and exempt-property rights. Several states adjust their dollar thresholds for inflation. Statutes change. Use this as a map, then confirm the current rule for your state before you rely on it.

A note on who publishes this. Settled Estate offers paid estate-guidance plans, and the state links in the table below point to our own guides. We publish this study as a free, fully sourced resource: every figure is drawn from a public statute, cited and linked in the table, and yours to use whether or not you ever work with us.

The surprise most people miss: blended families

The biggest gap between what people expect and what the law does shows up in blended families. In 31 of the 51 jurisdictions in this study, having a child from a previous relationship reduces what your surviving spouse inherits when you die without a will.

The mechanism varies but the direction is consistent. In many of these states the spouse takes the whole estate only when every surviving child is also that spouse's child; in others the spouse already shares with the couple's own children, and a child from another relationship cuts the share further still. Either way, a child from another relationship drops the spouse to a first-dollar amount plus a fraction, or to a flat one-half or one-third. In Colorado and Montana the spouse falls from the entire estate to the first $150,000 plus half (Colorado indexes that figure for inflation). In Florida, Oregon, and Vermont the spouse falls to one-half. Virginia is harsher still: the spouse falls to one-third, and two-thirds goes to the decedent's children from the other relationship. Even in community-property Arizona, Texas, and Wisconsin, a child from another relationship pulls the decedent's half of the community property away from the spouse and gives it to the children.

The rest of the states either give the spouse a fixed share regardless of the children's relationship, or, like New York, never give the spouse the whole estate once any children survive. Either way, the assumption that "it all goes to my spouse" is wrong far more often than it is right.

Three systems, one decision

Where a state lands comes down to which body of succession law it follows.

Common-law (separate-property) states, 25 of them, treat most property as owned by whoever holds title. The surviving spouse's share is set by statute and varies widely. Some give the spouse a fixed fraction (Georgia and Tennessee guarantee the spouse at least one-third; Kansas and Illinois give one-half when children survive). Others use a first-dollar amount plus a fraction: Pennsylvania gives the spouse the first $30,000 plus half even when every child is shared, while Ohio gives the spouse the whole estate when all the children are shared and drops the spouse to the first $20,000 plus a fraction only once a child is from another relationship. A few use dower and curtesy, an older system where the spouse takes a life interest in part of the real property rather than outright ownership (Arkansas and Kentucky).

Community-property states, nine of them (Arizona, California, Idaho, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Washington, Wisconsin), start from the premise that the spouses jointly own what they earned during the marriage. The surviving spouse already owns half of that community property, and usually keeps the decedent's half as well. The split, when there is one, falls on the separate property.

Uniform Probate Code states, 17 of them, adopted a national model built around the blended-family question. The newer version (Colorado, Montana, Minnesota) gives the spouse the entire estate when all children are shared and reduces it only for a child from another relationship. Older adopters (Michigan, Nebraska, Alabama) still hand the spouse a first-dollar amount plus half even when every child is the couple's, and South Carolina flattened its version to a simple one-half.

These three labels are not perfectly exclusive. A community-property state can also follow the Uniform Probate Code's distribution rules for separate property, as Arizona and New Mexico do. Each state is placed under the label that most shapes its surviving-spouse share, but the dataset behind this study records the marital-property regime and the governing statute as separate fields, so the counts above (nine community-property, 17 UPC, 25 common-law) reflect that primary label rather than a claim that no state belongs to more than one tradition.

Spouse and children: who gets what, by state

Search or scan the table for any state. The two middle columns are the heart of it: what a surviving spouse inherits when all the children are of the marriage, and what changes when one child is from another relationship.

Download the full dataset (CSV). It includes every scenario cell, the statute citation, and the per-row verification status for all 51 jurisdictions, so any figure here can be checked or reused.

In practice: three $400,000 estates

The share language is easier to see with a number attached. Take a married person who dies without a will, leaving a spouse and one child from an earlier relationship, and a $400,000 estate that goes through probate.

• Ohio (common-law). The spouse takes the first $20,000 plus half of the balance: $20,000 plus $190,000, or $210,000. The child takes $190,000. Had the child been the couple's, the spouse would have taken the entire $400,000.
• Colorado (Uniform Probate Code). The spouse takes the first $150,000 plus half of the balance: $150,000 plus $125,000, or $275,000. The child takes $125,000. Had every child been shared, the spouse would have taken the entire $400,000.
• Texas (community property). Of $400,000 in community property, the spouse already owns half ($200,000) and keeps it; the decedent's half ($200,000) passes to the child from the earlier relationship. Had the child been the couple's, the spouse would have kept all $400,000 of community property.

Same family, same estate, three very different outcomes for the spouse, none of which is "everything."

Spouse but no children

When there are no children, most states still do not hand the spouse everything automatically. Many common-law and UPC states give the spouse the whole estate only if no parent survives; if a parent does, the spouse shares. Colorado and Montana give the spouse the first $300,000 plus three-quarters when a parent survives and there are no descendants; New Hampshire the first $250,000 plus three-quarters; the District of Columbia three-quarters. Others (Florida, Virginia, Ohio, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota) do give the spouse the entire estate once there are no descendants, leaving nothing to the parents. When there is no spouse, every state sends the estate down to the children and their descendants first, then back up to parents and siblings.

Who intestacy leaves out

Intestacy recognizes only legal relationships. An unmarried partner inherits nothing under a state's default rules, no matter how long the couple was together or whether they shared a home. The estate passes to a legal spouse, then children, then parents and more distant relatives; a partner who is not a spouse is not on that list. The one exception is common-law marriage: a handful of states (including Texas, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Montana, Utah, Rhode Island, and the District of Columbia) treat a couple who meet a specific legal test as married even without a ceremony, in which case the survivor inherits as a spouse. Whether a couple qualifies is a fact question that courts often have to decide after the fact. The same "not on the list" problem hits stepchildren the decedent never legally adopted and close friends or a favorite charity. For an older adult who has re-partnered without remarrying, that can mean a partner of decades receives nothing while a distant or estranged relative inherits. The fixes are the ordinary tools of estate planning: a will or living trust, joint titling with right of survivorship, or naming the person as a beneficiary on accounts and policies. A marital or QTIP trust and, in blended families, a prenuptial agreement can also override the state default. Which of these fits your family depends on your state, your assets, and your goals, so ask an estate-planning attorney which one solves your problem before you rely on it.

Methodology and sources

Each state's row is built from that state's primary intestate-succession statute: the Uniform Probate Code sections as each state enacted them, or the state's own probate, estates, or descent-and-distribution code. Every row in the table links directly to its primary statute, and for this edition all 51 were cross-checked against that source and are marked "primary-source verified." That pass mattered: it corrected several dollar amounts an earlier draft had estimated (for example Hawaii's figures, which its legislature amended in 2023, and Alaska's), which is why each row shows both its statute link and its verification status. The scenario cells describe the DEFAULT distribution of probate property only. They are simplified and do not model property that passes outside probate, the elective or forced share, homestead or family allowances, half-blood or advancement rules, or the mechanics of representation among more remote descendants.

Dollar amounts are the figures stated in the statute. Several states (including Colorado, Michigan, Maine, and Montana) index those amounts for the cost of living, so the number applied to an estate in a given year can be higher than the base figure shown here; those states are noted, and the current adjusted figure is published by each state. Where a state's rule turns on unusual concepts (Louisiana's usufruct, Arkansas's and Kentucky's dower and curtesy, Oklahoma's joint-industry rule, Indiana's second-spouse life estate), the row flags it.

The blended-family penalty is recorded as a simple yes or no, and that binary cannot capture every nuance. In a few states the blended-family treatment is not a smaller fraction but a different kind of interest (Louisiana's usufruct, the dower and curtesy of Arkansas and Kentucky, the life estates of Indiana and Oklahoma), and reasonable lawyers could classify those differently. The count of 31 reflects states where a child from another relationship demonstrably reduces the surviving spouse's share of the probate estate compared with an all-shared family.

This is a research resource, not legal advice, and intestacy is the outcome you get only if you do nothing. A will or living trust replaces these defaults with your own choices; jointly titled property and accounts with named beneficiaries pass outside them entirely. If your family includes children from more than one relationship, or you want your spouse to inherit more than your state's default, the fix is simple and worth doing: put it in writing, and confirm the current rule for your state with a probate or estate-planning attorney.