When someone dies without a valid will — or with a will that fails to dispose of everything — the law steps in with a fixed statutory scheme that decides who inherits. As a solicitor, you will routinely advise families and administer estates where these rules govern the outcome, so you need to identify the beneficiaries precisely, calculate shares correctly, and spot the situations where the obvious answer is wrong.
This lesson builds the scheme up one piece at a time, from first principles to the trickier corners.
- Nature, Scope and the Intestate Estate — what the rules are, when they apply, and which property actually passes under them.
- Qualifying as a Surviving Spouse or Civil Partner — who counts as a spouse, the 28-day survival rule, and how separation and divorce affect entitlement.
- Who Counts as Issue — how children, adopted children, stepchildren and unborn children are treated.
- Distribution of the Estate — the spouse's entitlement, the statutory legacy, and the strict order of priority among relatives.
- Statutory Trusts and Substitution — how issue and others take their shares, vesting conditions, and per stirpes distribution.
- Forfeiture, Disclaimer and Simultaneous Deaths — what happens when a beneficiary kills, refuses, or dies at the same time as the deceased.
- Right to Appropriate the Dwelling House — how a surviving spouse can take the family home, and on what terms.