If you die without a will in Virginia, state law determines who receives any property you owned that has no specific mechanism to transfer upon your death. One of your loved ones must request a court appointment to gain the legal authority to administer your estate, meaning paying debts and expenses, then legally transferring your property to its new owners. That person must follow Virginia law to determine who receives your property, then distribute it to those people.
Tavss Fletcher helps you create a will as one part of a coordinated estate plan that gives your loved ones clear directions and reflects your wishes. Our experienced estate planning attorneys have served residents of Virginia and North Carolina for more than 30 years. We can help you determine which property your will should address, choose people to carry out important responsibilities, and coordinate your will with the other parts of your estate plan.
What Does a Will Do?
When you die, the property you own becomes your estate. Some of the assets that your estate includes may have mechanisms that allow your loved ones to transfer that property to a new owner upon your death, such as:
- Assets held in a properly structured trust,
- Beneficiary designations, and
- Joint ownership arrangements.
These assets with dedicated death-time transfer mechanisms are called “non-probate” assets.
Probate assets lack those transfer mechanisms and require your loved ones to complete the probate process to transfer ownership. Your will provides directions for your loved ones to follow about how to distribute your probate assets after your death. It also typically names an executor to carry out those instructions.
What Happens If You Die Without a Will?
When you die without a will, Virginia law determines who receives your probate assets. Dying without a will is called dying intestate, and the property you leave at that time is your intestate estate. Since you named no executor, someone must step forward and ask the circuit court clerk for authority to administer the estate to begin transferring your property to its new owners. That person serves in the same role an executor would have, but the law calls them the estate’s administrator. Both executors and administrators are considered “personal representatives” under estate law.
What Must the Administrator Do?
If more than one person is interested in serving as administrator, Virginia law establishes the order of priority, beginning with a surviving spouse. The person must request an appointment from a probate court, which often requires them to post a bond and take an oath before granting them authority to administer the estate. Through the oath, the administrator promises to administer your estate in the best interests of the estate and your heirs.
After the court officially appoints them to serve, the administrator:
- Gathers and inventories probate property,
- Provides notices to others that they have started estate administration,
- Responds to claims that the estate owes debts and pays estate expenses, and
- Distributes remaining estate assets according to Virginia intestate succession law.
The administrator distributes remaining assets to the relatives Virginia law identifies as your heirs.
Who Inherits When You Die Without a Will in Virginia?
Who receives that property depends on which relatives survive you. If you leave:
- A spouse and no children: your spouse receives the entire intestate estate;
- A spouse, and all your descendants, are also your surviving spouse’s descendants: your spouse receives the entire intestate estate;
- A spouse and at least one child or descendant who is not also your surviving spouse’s child or descendant: your spouse receives one-third of the intestate estate, and your children and their descendants receive the other two-thirds;
- Descendants but no spouse: your children and their descendants receive the entire intestate estate;
- No spouse, child, or descendant: your parents receive the estate;
- No spouse, descendants, or parents: your siblings and their descendants receive the estate; and
- No spouse, descendants, parents, siblings, or descendants of siblings: your grandparents or their surviving relatives receive the estate, including aunts, uncles, and their descendants.
If your grandparents have no surviving descendants when you die, the law directs that your property go to your great-grandparents, then your great-aunts and great-uncles and their descendants, then to any traceable relatives. Only if none of those relatives survives you does the property pass to the Commonwealth of Virginia.
How Does Your Representative Distribute Your Property?
If you die with no will in Virginia, the law sometimes directs that your entire estate passes to one person. In other cases, multiple people are entitled to share the estate. Virginia law determines the portion of your overall estate that each person inherits, while the representative determines how to distribute the probate property to provide each person with their share.
Suppose you have three children who are each entitled to one-third of your intestate estate. After inventorying every asset your estate includes, the representative determines the overall value of your estate and the value of each individual asset. They then need to distribute that overall estate evenly among your children.
The children can agree on who should receive particular belongings, but the representative is responsible for deciding how to create equal shares using different combinations of money and personal property. They might divide cash equally, distribute items of comparable value to different children, or use cash to balance differences between the items each child receives. If one child receives a valuable vehicle, for instance, that child may receive less cash so that all three ultimately receive equal shares of your personal property. The representative may sell property and divide the proceeds when allocating the property itself would not produce the required shares.
Create a Will That Expresses Your Wishes
Dying without a will means state law decides what happens to your property. Creating a will allows you to select an executor, direct who should receive your probate assets, assign particular property to particular people, and nominate a guardian for any minor children. Coordinating your will with beneficiary designations, survivorship arrangements, and trusts helps ensure all parts of your estate plan work together as a single, consistent plan.
Tavss Fletcher helps individuals and families create wills and coordinate them with other estate-planning documents tailored to their property, relationships, and goals. Contact our Virginia Wills and Trust Lawyers at Tavss Fletcher to discuss creating an estate plan that gives your loved ones clear guidance and peace of mind.
Legal References Used to Inform This Page
To ensure the accuracy and clarity of this page, we referenced official legal resources during the content development process: