Survivorship Clauses and Simultaneous Death in Probate Court

When you think of leaving property to someone as part of your estate plan, you might just assume that they will be around long enough to enjoy and appreciate what you may have left them. But that’s not always the case. Sometimes, a beneficiary passes away very quickly after the deceased passes away, and when that happens, it can cause unexpected problems when it comes to probate, and who gets what.

The Problem With a Beneficiary Passing Away

Imagine that you leave property to your brother. You pass away, and 2 weeks later, unexpectedly, your brother passes away also. Your brother only had what you left him, for 2 weeks. Now, everything you left him, is going to whomever he has designated in his estate documents, or it goes to whomever gets what under Florida’s intestate statutes, if your brother had no will.

That’s not ideal for you. If you had hypothetically known that your brother would only live for two weeks after you, you likely would have given what he received, to someone else, who was alive to appreciate or use it.

How Survivorship Clauses Help

That’s where survivorship comes in. Survivorship says that in order to actually inherit something you leave to a beneficiary, that beneficiary must survive for a stated amount of time after you pass—usually between 30 or 60 days.

If someone dies before the expiration of the survivorship period, they would inherit nothing from you, and your estate plan would dictate who gets whatever the now-deceased beneficiary was supposed to get.

What About Simultaneous Deaths?

This scenario is very similar to what happens when there is simultaneous death—that is, tragedies where someone may die at the same time as someone else, and that someone else was supposed to inherit property from the other person.

Normally, based on medical and coroner records, people would have to try to ascertain who survived who, to see who gets what property from whom. But with a survivorship provision in a will, that doesn’t matter.

If it cannot be determined who passed away first, the law assumes that both deceased people survived the other, for the purposes of probate.

So, for example, if Sister 1 and Sister 2 both die at the same time in a car crash, Sister 1’s property would go to whomever would inherit it under Sister 2’s will, or under intestate statutes, and vice versa for Sister 2’s property.

That may be just fine with you, but if it isn’t, a survivorship clause in a will, can avoid that from happening. In the example above, instead of Sister 1’s property going to Sister 2’s family, heirs, friends, etc., Sister 1’s property would go to whomever else Sister 1 may have designated as a backup beneficiary.

Don’t leave your family to fight with each other in probate court. Get help before, and during, the probate process. Call the West Palm Beach probate lawyers at The Law Offices of Larry E. Bray today for help with your probate law case.

Source:

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