The laws of inheritance determine who inherits in the following situations:

1. A person dies intestate (without a valid will;)
2. A person has a valid will but for some reason, usually a mistake or the death of a beneficiary, the will does not dispose of all of the property - the property not disposed of by the valid will, will go to the persons determined by the laws of inheritance; and,
3. A person has a will but the will is contested and is not admitted to probate. The person is then treated as if he died intestate (without a will) and the laws of inheritance determine who inherits the estate.
   

Texas, like all states, has laws of inheritance that determine who inherits a deceased person's estate. It is important to remember that if a person has a valid will that disposes of all of his property, it is the will and not the inheritance laws that determines who inherits the estate. The laws of inheritance determine who inherits only when there is no valid will that disposes of all of the property.

To find out who inherits the estate's property if there is no valid will disposing of all of the property, click on one of the following:

1. Children, including adopted, pretermitted and illegitimate children;
2. Spouses, including common law as well as putative spouses;
3. Parents and siblings; and
4. Other relatives like nieces and nephews, aunts and uncles.

To find out what kinds of property are subject to the laws of inheritance, click here.

As an easy starting point to learn about the inheritance rights of children, the following list is provided:

1. The inheritance rights of natural children;
2. The inheritance rights of adopted children;
3. The inheritance rights of children born after a will is made; and
4. The inheritance rights of illegitimate children.

Click on one of the links above to learn more about the inheritance rights of children. If you don't find the exact answer to your question, use the search box in the upper right hand corner to refine your search.

When a child is adopted, he becomes the child of his adoptive parents. He inherits from and through them. That means that the adopted child will inherit from the ancestors of the parent who adopted him as well as from the parent.

The question is often asked about the inheritance rights of the child from his natural or biological parents. Generally, the adopted child inherits from his biological parents and his adoptive parents. Of course, this only applies if the parents, adoptive or biological, don't have wills. If either or both have wills, their estate goes to whomever they say in their will. Texas does not have "forced heirship." An adoptive or biological parent does not have to leave anything to his children. But if he dies intestate, then his estate would be divided between his biological and adopted children.

An exception to the above rule may occur if the parental rights of the biological parent were terminated by a court order. If the termination order is silent as to inheritance, then the above rule applies. If, however, the termination order says that the child will not inherit from his biological parent, then there would be no inheritance unless the biological parent left a will specifically naming the child as a beneficiary.

Until 1991, illegitimate children did not inherit from their parents. In that year, the Texas Supreme Court, following an earlier ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court held that the statutes that deny inheritance rights to illegitimate children violated the Constitution's equal protection clause.

As originally enacted, the Probate Code accorded paternal inheritance rights to an illegitimate child only if the parents had married after the child's birth. The statute was amended several times to allow inheritance rights to illegitimate children if the father took some voluntary action to acknowledge the child before he died. In declaring the statute unconstitutional, the Supreme Court said "(t)he legal status of illegitimacy is, like race or national origin, a characteristic beyond an individual's control, and it bears no relation to the individual's ability to participate in and contribute to society...thus, a statutory classification based on illegitimacy violates equal protection unless it is substantially related to an important governmental interest." Finding no substantial government interest in denying inheritance rights to illegitimate children, the Supreme Court declared the statute unconstitutional.

The current Probate Code provides that illegitimate children inherit from their parents and other ancestors and descendants to the same extent as legitimate children.

Problems arise when a child is never acknowledge as a child or is unknown as a child of their biological parents. This can happen when a mother gives

Joint accounts are accounts, usually with a financial institution, where more than one person has rights to the account.  Deciding what those rights are is a problem often faced in contested probate cases. Are they survivorship accounts where the survivor gets all of the account and the money does not got through a will or probate? Are they non-survivorship accounts where the money does not go to the survivor but passes through the will and through probate?

Accounts with community property owned by both spouses are treated differently than accounts between non-spouses (See below.)

The courts look at the documents creating the account and the words used to determine the type of account involved.  Often, the financial institution will use a pre-printed form that has boxes to check.  The card will be filled out correctly but no box will be checked!  Or two conflicting boxes will be checked!  Since all accounts are presumed to be non-survivorship accounts, the burden of proof is on the person claiming that the account is a survivorship account to prove that it is.  If the boxes on the signature card are not checked, too many boxes are checked or as one jury found, checked later by someone not the owner of the account, then the account is not a survivor account.  The account would pass through the owner's will or through his estate. However, the courts are more likely to find that two spouses intended to create joint accounts with right of survivorship than the are likely to find that two non-spouses intended to create such accounts. In other words, the burden of proof on non-spousal accounts is higher than it is on spousal accounts.

Joint accounts can cause difficulties.  The difficulties related to the type of joint account in question.  There are three basic joint accounts:

1. convenience accounts - where one or more persons own the account but other, non-owners, are allowed to make withdrawals  On the death of the owner, the account passes through his will or through his probate estate and does not pass to the non-owner;
2. tenants in common - where two are more persons own the account equally - when one owner dies, his share passes through his will or through his probate estate and does not pass to the other owner; and
3. joint accounts - with or without the right of survivorship.

• with right of survivorship means that when one of the joint owners dies, the account belongs to the survivor and does not pass through the deceased's will or through his probate estate.
• without right of survivorship means that the account is owned by the joint owners and when one dies, his share passes through his will or through his probate estate and does not pass to the other owner.

An example of the difficulty with joint accounts are the following cases:

1. One case held that there was no right of survivorship even though the signature card said " Joint accounts - with survivorship" since the language did not match that required by statute to create a survivorship account;
2. Another case held that there was no right of survivorship because no box had been checked;
3. Signature card said "Type of customer - joint with survivorship" held not a survivorship account; and,
4. "Joint account - payable to either or survivor" was not a survivorship account.