What Is Intestate Succession in California?

Intestate succession is California's default inheritance formula, applied when a person dies without a valid will or trust, or when an instrument fails to dispose of everything. The Probate Code, beginning at section 6400, decides who takes and how much, based on the family tree and on whether each asset was community or separate property.

The broad strokes: a surviving spouse takes all of the community property. Separate property is divided between the spouse and the decedent's children, parents, or siblings in statutory fractions that depend on how many survivors there are; with one child the spouse takes half, with two or more the spouse takes a third. With no spouse, everything runs down the line of descendants, then to parents, siblings, and more remote kin. Unmarried partners inherit nothing under intestacy, no matter how long the relationship, which is one of the most painful surprises the statute delivers.

Intestate estates require a probate administration, and the fights they generate involve heirship determinations, omitted and after-discovered children, community versus separate property characterization, and competing petitions to administer the estate.