How the law distributes an estate where there is no valid will — a fixed statutory scheme that determines who inherits, in what order and in what shares.
Where intestacy applies, the deceased's wishes count for nothing: everything turns on family status and a rigid statutory order. This chapter starts with when the rules bite, the difference between total and partial intestacy, and which property actually falls into the intestate estate, before tightening the focus to who qualifies as a surviving spouse or civil partner and who counts as the deceased's issue. It then works through the distribution itself — the spouse's entitlement, the strict order of priority among other relatives — and the statutory trusts, with their vesting conditions and per stirpes substitution. The final sections deal with the complications: forfeiture, disclaimer and simultaneous deaths, and the surviving spouse's right to appropriate the dwelling house.
