Intestate

Intestate means dying without a valid will. Minnesota's intestacy statutes then decide who inherits.

The state does not take it#

The most persistent myth in this area.

Minnesota's rules distribute to surviving relatives in a defined order, reaching outward through the family — spouse, descendants, parents, siblings, and further out.

Property escheats to the state only where no qualifying relative can be identified at all. That is rare, and it requires a genuine failure to find anyone rather than a failure to leave instructions.

The outcome is often not what the family expected#

Where the surprises live.

The rules treat a surviving spouse differently depending on whether there are descendants, and on whether those descendants are also the spouse's. A second marriage with children from a first is the classic case where the statutory result differs sharply from what everyone assumed.

Stepchildren who were never adopted have no intestate claim. Unmarried partners have none, however long the relationship. Someone who was promised a house verbally has none.

None of that is a defect in the statute. It is what happens when a fixed rule substitutes for an individual's intentions.

Probate is still required#

Intestacy answers who inherits. It does not transfer anything.

Where the decedent owned real property in their own name, probate is what moves title to the heirs. The $75,000 small-estate affidavit covers personal property only and cannot transfer a house.

Two separate things, both necessary, and families routinely believe the first accomplishes the second.

Where it produces tangled title#

The chain runs like this.

Someone dies intestate owning a house. Several heirs inherit shares under the statute. Nobody opens a probate, because nobody is forcing them and one of them is living there.

Three years pass and informal probate is no longer available.

Now the house is held by several people whose interests are real and unrecorded, one of whom occupies it, none of whom can sell it. Twenty years and a second death later, the interests have multiplied and some holders cannot be found.

That is heirs' property, and dying intestate with real estate is how most of it starts.

The fix while it is still cheap#

Open a probate. Within three years, informally, for a few hundred dollars in filing fees and some paperwork.

The alternative, later, is a formal proceeding or a quiet title action costing many multiples of that — assuming everyone with an interest can still be found.