Massachusetts Has Inheritance Laws Whether You Write a Will or Not
Most people call them inheritance laws. Massachusetts calls it intestate succession, and it is the plan the Commonwealth applies when you die without a will. It is not a penalty and it is not random. It is a fixed order written into chapter 190B, and it applies to your family whether or not it matches anything you would have chosen. The people it surprises most are married couples, because the statute does not always leave everything to the spouse.
Intestacy Only Governs What Would Have Gone Through Probate
Before the statute matters at all, most families need to separate two categories. Life insurance, retirement accounts, and anything else with a named beneficiary pass to that person directly. Property held jointly with a right of survivorship passes to the surviving owner. Assets already in a trust pass under the trust. What is left, meaning the house in your name alone, the individual bank account, the car, is the probate estate, and that is what the intestacy rules divide.
What the Surviving Spouse Actually Receives
The share depends on who else survives you. Under c.190B §2-102, a spouse takes the entire intestate estate if you leave no descendants and no parents, or if every one of your descendants is also a descendant of your spouse and your spouse has no other children. If you leave no descendants but a parent survives, the spouse takes the first $200,000 plus three quarters of the balance. If all of your descendants are also your spouse’s, but your spouse has children from another relationship, the spouse takes the first $100,000 plus half the balance. And if any of your descendants is not your spouse’s child, the spouse again takes the first $100,000 plus half the balance.
The Case That Catches People: Married, No Children, Parent Living
A couple in their forties, no children, one of them dies. Nearly everyone assumes the surviving spouse inherits everything. If a parent of the person who died is still living, that is not what happens. The parent shares in the estate. That can mean a surviving spouse holding three quarters of the balance and a conversation nobody wanted to have about the house.
The Blended Family Case
The statute treats children from a prior relationship differently on purpose. If you have a child from an earlier marriage, or your spouse does, the spouse’s share drops to the first $100,000 plus half of what remains. The rest goes to descendants. Families who have spent years thinking of themselves as one household are often the most surprised by this, because the law is drawing a line they stopped drawing long ago.
Without a Spouse, It Runs Down the Family Tree
Section 2-103 sets the order for everything not passing to a spouse: first to your descendants, per capita at each generation; if none, to your parents; if none, to your parents’ descendants, meaning your siblings and their children; and if none of those, to your next of kin in equal degree. It keeps going until it finds someone. What it will never do is stop at the person you would have chosen.
What the Statute Cannot Do for You
It distributes property and nothing else. It does not nominate a guardian for your minor children, so that decision is left to a judge without your input. It does not hold an inheritance in trust for a young adult who is not ready for it, or for a child in the middle of a divorce or a creditor problem. It does not do any tax planning. And it does not account for the stepchild you raised, the partner you never married, or the charity you always meant to name, because none of them appear anywhere in the order.
A Will Is the Smaller Half of the Answer
Writing a will replaces the default order with your own. Whether you also need a trust depends on what you own and what you are trying to protect, which is a separate question worth answering honestly rather than by reflex. If you are starting from nothing, our FAQ on whether you need a will or a trust is the place to begin, and the Massachusetts estate planning checklist covers what else belongs alongside it.
Start with a free 15-minute consult call with Nicole Ott, our Lead Intake Coordinator. Tell her who is in your family and what you own in your own name. That is usually enough for us to say how far the default rules are from what you actually want.
