What Happens If You Die Without a Will in California?

What does "dying intestate" actually mean?

If you die without a valid will, the law calls it dying intestate — and California already has a plan for your property. It just isn't your plan. It's a fixed statutory formula written into the California Probate Code, sections 6400 through 6414, called intestate succession. The formula looks at exactly two things: what kind of property you owned, and which relatives survived you. It does not consider what you said you wanted, who took care of you, who you were estranged from, or who needs the money most.

Roughly two out of three American adults have no will, so this default plan is what actually happens to most estates. The results regularly surprise families: spouses who expected to inherit everything receive a fraction of the separate property, unmarried partners of decades receive nothing, and stepchildren who were raised as family are legally strangers to the estate.

This page walks through the whole picture. For a row-by-row chart of every survivor combination, see who inherits in California when there's no will.

Who decides who gets my property?

A judge — but not in the way most people imagine. The Superior Court in the county where you lived opens a probate case. Because there's no will naming an executor, the court appoints an administrator to run the estate, following a strict priority list in Probate Code § 8461: your surviving spouse or domestic partner first, then children, grandchildren, parents, siblings, and on down the line.

The judge has no discretion over who inherits. The intestacy statutes are a formula, and the court's job is to apply it. If the formula produces a result your family thinks is unfair — the estranged child inheriting equally with the devoted one, the second spouse splitting separate property with children from a first marriage — the court cannot fix it. The details of how the court process works, what it costs, and how long it takes are covered in probate without a will in California.

Why is community vs. separate property the master key?

California is a community property state, and every intestacy answer starts by sorting your assets into two buckets:

• Community property — generally everything either spouse earned or acquired during the marriage (wages, the house bought together, retirement contributions made while married). Each spouse already owns half.
• Separate property — what you owned before the marriage, plus gifts and inheritances you personally received at any time, and property acquired after separation.

The two buckets follow completely different intestacy rules, which is why the same family can get very different outcomes depending on how an asset is classified. The classification rules — including tricky cases like a house bought before marriage but paid down during it — are covered in depth in our guide to community property inheritance in California.

What do my spouse and children actually receive?

Probate Code § 6401 sets the surviving spouse's share (registered domestic partners are treated the same as spouses):

• Community property: your spouse receives your one-half, and already owns the other half — so the spouse ends up with 100% of the community property.
• Separate property, no children, parents, or siblings: your spouse receives everything.
• Separate property, one child: your spouse receives one-half; the child receives the other half. The same one-half split applies if you leave no children but are survived by parents or siblings.
• Separate property, two or more children: your spouse receives one-third; your children split the remaining two-thirds.

If you have no spouse, Probate Code § 6402 sends everything down a fixed ladder: children first (grandchildren step into a deceased child's place), then parents, then siblings, then grandparents and their descendants, then increasingly remote relatives. If no relatives can be found at all, the property escheats — it goes to the State of California.

The spouse's share surprises people so often that we wrote a dedicated answer: does a surviving spouse inherit everything in California?

Who gets nothing under intestate succession?

How long does it take — and why is it all public?

An intestate estate generally goes through full probate administration. The commonly cited range for a California probate is 9 to 18 months, and contested or complex estates run longer. The broad strokes: someone petitions the court, a hearing is held to appoint the administrator, creditors get a formal window to file claims, every asset is inventoried and appraised by a court-appointed referee, and only then can a final petition for distribution be approved. Your family typically cannot fully access or sell estate assets in the meantime.

Probate is also a public court proceeding. The petition, the inventory of everything you owned with appraised values, your debts, and the names and shares of your heirs all go into the court file, which anyone — a curious neighbor, a solicitor, a estranged relative — can request and read.

It isn't cheap either. California sets statutory probate fees as a percentage of the gross estate, and they're paid twice — once to the attorney and once to the administrator. You can estimate the cost for any estate size with our California probate fees calculator. Very small estates can skip much of this — see California's small estate shortcut for the current thresholds.

What happens to my minor children without a will?

A will is where California parents nominate a guardian for their minor children. Without one, a judge chooses the guardian based on the child's best interests — with no signal from you about who you trusted, and with relatives free to compete for the role.

The money side is just as awkward: a minor can't directly manage inherited property, so the court may need to appoint a property guardian, and the child typically receives whatever remains outright at 18 — an age at which few people are ready to manage a lump sum.

How does a will or trust override all of this?

Intestate succession is purely a fallback — it applies only to property that no valid document directs. A valid will replaces the entire statutory formula with your instructions: who inherits (including non-relatives and charities), in what shares, who serves as executor, and who you nominate as guardian for minor children. A funded living trust goes one step further and keeps assets out of probate court entirely — private, faster, and without statutory probate fees.

Some assets bypass intestacy on their own regardless: retirement accounts and life insurance with named beneficiaries, payable-on-death bank accounts, and property held in joint tenancy all pass outside the formula. But everything else — often including the family home — falls back to the statute unless a will or trust says otherwise.

Making a will in California is simpler than most people expect: you need to be 18 or older and of sound mind, put it in writing, and sign it with two witnesses. Our step-by-step guide to how to make a will in California walks through every requirement.

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