Intestacy laws can redirect an estate faster than many physicians expect
When a person dies without a valid will, state law takes over. A probate court usually appoints an administrator to settle the estate, and property owned outright by the decedent passes to relatives in the order the state prescribes. These intestacy laws are not uniform, and the differences can be stark enough to change how much a surviving spouse receives, whether children from another relationship inherit immediately, and whether a second probate proceeding is needed in another state.
The practical consequence is immediate: family structure, property title, and state of residence can matter more than most people assume.
Under intestate succession statutes, the surviving spouse and children generally come first, followed by parents, siblings, and more remote relatives. If no qualifying heir exists, the property can ultimately pass to the government. That framework sounds orderly, but the exact formula varies widely across states, especially in how each jurisdiction treats a spouse’s share when children survive.
Spousal shares vary sharply from one state to another
New York, Florida, Illinois, Montana, Pennsylvania, and Virginia illustrate how differently states can divide the same estate. Under New York law, a surviving spouse who shares the estate with children receives $50,000 plus half of what remains. Florida is more generous in one common family structure: if every child is also the spouse’s child and the spouse has no children from another relationship, the surviving spouse takes the entire estate. Illinois takes a different approach and gives the spouse half when children survive.
Montana follows the Uniform Probate Code model and uses a dollar-plus-fraction formula. If no descendants or parents survive, the spouse takes the entire estate. If the decedent’s descendants are all shared with the spouse and the spouse has no other descendants, the spouse receives the full estate as well. When family circumstances are more complex, the spouse’s share drops to a fixed amount plus a fraction of the rest. Pennsylvania uses the same general structure but with smaller dollar thresholds. Virginia and Florida simplify the picture further in some situations by awarding the spouse everything unless there are children from another relationship.
One estate can therefore produce very different results depending on where the decedent lived, and sometimes where the property sits.
Probate does not control every asset
Intestacy statutes apply only to property that passes through probate. Assets with a designated recipient or surviving co-owner often bypass the probate process altogether. Joint bank accounts, certain jointly owned property, life insurance proceeds, retirement accounts with named beneficiaries, and property subject to transfer-on-death designations usually pass directly to the surviving owner or beneficiary.
A physician’s 401(k) or 403(b) with a current beneficiary designation will generally transfer to that beneficiary whether or not there is a will. The intestacy rules govern what remains: a house titled solely in the decedent’s name, a brokerage account held individually, personal belongings, and, for practice owners, an ownership interest in the practice. Those assets can be especially important for physicians whose business and personal finances are not fully separated.
Real estate can trigger another layer of complexity. Land and buildings pass under the law of the state where they are located, not necessarily the state where the owner lived. When a decedent owned property in more than one state, a second, ancillary probate case may be required in the state where the real estate sits.
Family order, survival rules, and the clock that decides inheritance
States also differ in how they rank relatives once a spouse is not the sole heir. New York moves from spouse and descendants to descendants alone, then parents, then siblings and their descendants, then grandparents and farther collateral relatives. Pennsylvania uses a similar progression. Illinois compresses some of those steps and, when there is no spouse or descendant, allows parents and siblings to share the estate equally, with a surviving parent receiving a double portion if the other parent has died.
Survival rules add another layer of precision. An heir must outlive the decedent by a minimum period to inherit. Montana’s version of the Uniform Probate Code requires a 120-hour survival period. Pennsylvania requires five days. If an heir does not meet that threshold, the law treats the person as having died first. In estates involving closely timed deaths, that rule can change who inherits and how much each branch of the family receives.
Why physicians and practice owners should care about title and beneficiary forms
For physicians, intestacy is not a theoretical estate-planning issue reserved for older patients. It reaches the structure of a family’s finances, the continuity of a practice, and the fate of individually titled assets. A doctor with substantial retirement assets but outdated beneficiary forms may still have those accounts pass outside probate, but other assets can fall squarely into intestate distribution. If a practice owner dies without a will, the ownership stake may become part of the probate estate and subject to the state’s default rules rather than a tailored succession plan.
A surviving spouse can fare very differently from one state to another. In one jurisdiction, the spouse may take everything; in another, the spouse may share with descendants, parents, or children from a prior relationship. That difference can be decisive when the estate includes a home, a brokerage account, or business equity that was never retitled or assigned through a beneficiary designation.
Uniform models reduce some variation, but not enough to erase state differences
The Uniform Law Commission drafted the Uniform Probate Code in 1969 and last amended it in 2019. Montana’s probate statutes are organized under that model and use its dollar figures for spousal shares. Even so, several large states have retained their own formulas. New York, Pennsylvania, and Illinois all use independent versions of intestacy law, and those differences can be meaningful for families with assets spread across states or with blended-family structures.
The legal mechanics are straightforward; the distribution outcome often is not. A state’s default inheritance rules are a substitute for a carefully written estate plan, not a personalized solution. In practice, they can favor one family structure over another, leave business interests in legal limbo, and force heirs to sort out property according to formulas they did not choose.
For physicians and other high-income professionals, the real vulnerability is not the absence of wealth. It is the absence of updated documents, current beneficiaries, and an ownership structure that matches the family’s actual situation.