A plain reading of what Pennsylvania and New Jersey law does with your property, your children, and your medical decisions when you have not said otherwise.
If you have never signed a will, you have not avoided the question. The legislature has answered it for you. Every state keeps a statute that decides who inherits when someone dies without a will, and that statute applies automatically, in a fixed order, without regard to what you would have wanted or who actually needs the money.
Most people are surprised by what it says. The rest of this guide walks through the parts that surprise them most.
This is the single most common misunderstanding. In Pennsylvania, if you die without a will and leave a spouse and children who are also your spouse's children, your spouse receives the first thirty thousand dollars of the estate and then half of the remainder. Your children take the other half. If any of your children are from an earlier relationship, your spouse's share drops to half with no initial allowance at all.
If you leave a spouse and no children but a surviving parent, your spouse does not take the whole estate either. Your parent receives a share.
New Jersey is more generous to spouses in some situations and less in others, and the two states diverge in ways that matter if you own property in both. A couple who assume the survivor simply keeps everything are usually wrong in at least one of the two states.
Minor children cannot receive an inheritance directly. If a share passes to a child under eighteen, the court appoints a guardian to hold it, and the child receives the entire balance on their eighteenth birthday with no conditions attached.
If both parents die and no will names a guardian, a judge decides who raises your children. In Pennsylvania that is the Orphans' Court; in New Jersey the matter runs through the Surrogate's Court and, where contested, the Superior Court. Either way the judge applies a best interests standard, hears from whoever comes forward, and rules on the record available.
A will does not bind the court, but it carries real weight, and in the ordinary case the named guardian is appointed without a contest. The alternative is relatives disagreeing in front of a judge who never met your family.
Even people who have a will often assume it governs everything they own. It does not. Several categories of property pass outside the will entirely, by their own terms, no matter what the will says.
| What you own | Who decides where it goes |
|---|---|
| Life insurance | The beneficiary form on file with the insurer |
| Retirement accounts | The beneficiary designation, which overrides the will |
| A jointly owned home | The deed. Joint tenants with right of survivorship pass automatically |
| Payable on death accounts | The named beneficiary at the bank |
| Assets held in a trust | The trust document |
The practical consequence is that an old beneficiary form can quietly undo a carefully drafted will. A retirement account still naming a former spouse will pay that former spouse, and the will has nothing to say about it.
A will does nothing until you die. Two other documents do the harder work, and they are the ones families most often wish they had.
Names someone to handle money, property, and paperwork if you cannot. Without one, your family may need a court guardianship, which is slow, public, and expensive, at exactly the moment they can least afford any of the three.
Names someone to make medical decisions and records what you want if you cannot speak for yourself. It spares the people who love you from guessing, and from arguing with each other about the guess.
Before any conversation with a lawyer, these are worth knowing. None of them require you to decide anything yet.
The Sampat Law Firm offers a consultation at no charge, by telephone, video, or at the Langhorne office. Roughly thirty minutes, and there is no obligation at the end of it.
215-268-6520 · Info@SampatLaw.com · SampatLaw.com
This guide is general information about Pennsylvania and New Jersey law and is not legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Statutes change and every family is different, so please do not act on it without speaking to a lawyer about your own circumstances. The Sampat Law Firm, LLC is licensed in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.