Legal Terms Chapter 28 - Disinheritance and Intestacy Flashcards
Adoption
The legal process in which a child’s legal rights and duties towards his or her natural parents are replaced by similar rights and duties toward his or her adopting parents.
Collateral relatives
Relatives not in a direct line, such as brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles, aunts, and cousins.
Coparceners
Persons to whom an estate of inheritance descends jointly and by whom it is held as an entire estate (early English law); essentially, if there is no first born son, all the daughters inherit jointly.
Coverture
Marriage.
Curtesy
At common law, the right of a widower, if issue of the marriage were born alive, to a life estate in real property owned by his wife during coverture; now men and women treated the same and the property is what is owned at time of death.
Decedent
Deceased person.
Degree of kindred
The determination of the respective relationships between a decedent and his or her relatives, undertaken to measure who are most nearly related by blood.
Descendants
Those who are of the bloodstream (including adopted children) of a common ancestor.
Descent
Succession to the ownership of real property by inheritance (early English law).
Disinheritance
Purposely omitted from a will.
Distribution
The apportionment and division of the personal property of an intestate among his or her heirs (early English law).
Dower
At common law, the right of a widow to a life estate in one-third of all real property owned by her husband during coverture; now treat men and women the same and the property is what is owned at time of death.
Elective share
A statutory sum given to a surviving spouse who disclaims the provisions made for him or her in a deceased spouse’s will; also called forced share or statutory share.
Escheat
The reversion of property to the state if the property owner dies without heirs.
Forced heirs
A surviving spouse who elects to disclaim the provisions of a deceased spouse’s will.
Full age
Adulthood.
Half-blood
A relative who has one parent in common with another relative, but not both.
Homestead exemptions
In bankruptcy, the exemption of one’s residence up to a specific amount.
Illegitimate children
An old word referring to children born out of wedlock; also called bastards or nonmarital children.
Intestacy
The state of having died without having made a valid will.
Kindred
Blood relatives.
Laws of descent and distribution
Without a will, their personal property passed to others according to the law of the state where they were domiciled when they died, and their real property passed according to the law of the state in which the property is located.
Legal fiction
An assumption, for purposes of justice, of a fact that does not exist.
Life estate
An estate in real property that is limited in duration to either the life of the owner or the life of another person.
Lineal ascendants
People who are in a direct line of ascent upward from the decedent.
Lineal descendants
People who are in a direct line of descent downward from the decedent.
Next friend
One acting for the benefit of an infant in bringing a legal action.
Next of kin
Those most nearly related by blood.
Paternity proceeding
A court action to determine whether a person is the father of a child born out of wedlock; also called affiliation proceeding.
Pretermitted child
A child who is omitted by a testator from a will.
Primogeniture
The state of being the first born among several children of the same parents (early English law).
Vested
Fixed or absolute; not contingent.
Waive a spouse’s will
To renounce or disclaim a spouse’s will.
