An intestacy situation arises where a deceased person has not made a will or where they’ve made a will and for whatever reason, it’s proved to be invalid. So those circumstances, the Succession Act 1965, and the rules of the Superior Court set out who is entitled to what and persons who are entitled to take out the grant to that person’s estate, assuming there is a grant required.
The rules of intestacy set out the order of who is entitled to what and in simple terms, the spouse of the deceased will be entitled to all of the estate. If there are no children? If there are children, then the spouse will be entitled to two-thirds and the children to the remaining third.
If the deceased, say, for example, died a bachelor and there were no children, the persons next entitled to the estate would be the parents of the deceased. And in circumstances where there are no parents, the next in line will be the brothers or sisters of the deceased, and so on and so forth. That goes.
Our general advice with regard to intestate situations is to try and avoid them wherever possible because they are, they may have unintended consequences and can be costly to clean up after the fact. One client in there during the week, he was the brother of a bachelor farmer who had died. He also had predeceased siblings. So it’s going to be a lot of work in terms of tracing their entitlement and it’s not a huge estate, so wherever possible, we would advise people to get into your solicitor, create a will and avoid intestate situations.
