Quick Summary
- If the deceased has not made individual estate arrangements, e.g. in a will, the estate does not remain unsettled; statutory inheritance law applies.
- Statutory inheritance law is society’s generally accepted model for the distribution of estates.
- The primary legal heirs are the genetic relatives of the deceased.
- The ranking of their entitlement to inherit is determined by the so-called “parental order”.
Death is something so strange that, regardless of all experience, it is not considered possible with an entity that is dear to us, and it occurs as something unbelievable and unexpected. It is, so to speak, an impossibility that suddenly becomes reality.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Coming to terms with one’s own mortality is not a particularly pleasant undertaking. It is generally avoided as far and as long as possible. Besides, natural death, even in old age, is not a predictable event. It is – to quote Goethe – the “impossibility that suddenly becomes reality”. It is therefore not uncommon that at the time of a person’s death there is no will in which the testator (the deceased) has written a last will and thus prepared the distribution of the estate according to his or her own individual wishes.
However, the fact that the testator has not made any will-based succession arrangements does not mean that the distribution of the estate remains unregulated. In such cases, statutory inheritance law applies.
Who inherits in the event of intestate succession?
In accordance with the social model, the testator’s genetic relatives (so-called “cognatic” family) are primarily appointed as legal heirs (“the estate runs with the blood“). In the case of adoption, the blood relationship is legally fictitious. Different-sex or same-sex spouses and life partners inherit alongside the cognatic relatives.
The legal order of succession is based on the so-called parental order. This ranks the relatives who are generally entitled to inherit according to the number of generations back to the closest common ancestor.
The first parental group comprises direct descendants, i.e. children; the second order includes parents and their descendants (i.e. sisters and brothers, nephews and nieces); the third order comprises grandparents and their descendants (i.e. aunts and uncles, cousins) of the deceased.
A preceding parental group excludes its subordinate group from the succession. For example, if there is a direct descendant at the time of inheritance, i.e. an heir of the first order of parental, he or she excludes all other relatives of other orders, e.g. living parents of the testator, from the succession.
Within a parental, the estate (at least in the first two parental groups) is distributed evenly according to head shares.
Direct descendants, being representatives of their family line, supersede all distant descendants related to the testator through them. For example, the living daughter of a (single) testator inherits alone and displaces her own children (i.e. the grandchildren of the testator) from the line of succession.
If the testator’s children are predeceased, their descendants succeed to the inheritance rights of their parents (the so-called step-in principle). The grandchildren of the deceased then divide among themselves the share of the estate to which their mother or father would have been entitled as a descendant.
If there are no legal heirs or if all heirs have renounced the inheritance, the tax authorities inherit.
You can find a detailed description of statutory inheritance law and the order of succession using illustrative examples in the article on statutory inheritance law in Germany.