How Do Florida’s Laws of Intestate Succession Deal With the Stepparent Wars?

The juiciest tabloid stories about disputes over the estate of a wealthy person are the ones that involve a relatively young widow and stepchildren who are uncomfortably close in age to her.  The parties may say all kinds of terrible things about each other, but most of the time, the probate court ends up following what the testator wrote in his will.  Most of us do not have nearly as much money as the people whose names continue to appear on celebrity news websites even after death, but we are just as vulnerable to family conflict, especially where blended families are involved.  The personal representative of the estate of someone who was married more than once has a thankless job unless the decedent thought carefully about what his or her surviving spouse would inherit and what his or her children from a previous marriage would inherit and documented this clearly in his or her estate planning documents.  Disinheriting one’s children in favor of a new spouse is a recipe for allegations of undue influence, although the authors of wills are within their rights to disinherit any family members they choose.  Likewise, disinheriting your spouse is a minefield of trouble unless both spouses waived their rights to an elective share in a prenup and jointly owned some property for the surviving spouse to inherit.  For help resolving estate disputes between stepparents and stepchildren, contact a Dade City probate lawyer.

Your Stepchildren Can’t Challenge a Will That Doesn’t Exist

The good news is that a remarried person dying without a will is not the worst-case scenario.  Florida’s laws of intestate succession provide a solution to potential conflicts between the decedent’s widow or widower and the decedent’s children from a previous marriage.  If the decedent’s children are also the children of the surviving spouse, the surviving spouse inherits the entire estate.  The assumption is that, when the second spouse dies, the entire estate will pass to the children; this is what happens if the second spouse also dies intestate.

If the surviving spouse is the stepparent, not the legal parent through birth or adoption, of the decedent’s children, then intestate succession goes differently.  In this case, the surviving spouse inherits half of the estate, and the other half of the estate is divided equally among the decedent’s children.

An Ambiguous Will Is as Bad as a Nonexistent One

When the decedent does not have any estate planning documents, the state has a simple solution regarding dividing the inheritance among the decedent’s children and their surviving stepparent, even if it means that some family members will inherit less than what they hoped.  The bigger problems arise when the decedent leaves estate planning documents, but they are contradictory or ambiguous; then there is room for challenges in probate court.

Contact a Florida Estate Planning Attorney About Probate Cases

A probate attorney can help you mediate the stepparent wars in your capacity as personal representative of a deceased person’s estate.  Contact The Law Office of Laurie R. Chane in Dade City, Florida to discuss your case.

Source:

leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&URL=0700-0799/0732/0732.html