Kansas Unborn Child Estate Rights
- When a person dies in Kansas and leaves behind property, the property is referred to as the person's estate. This is state property must get passed on to new owners, known generally as the heirs or inheritors. Depending on who survives the decedent after death, heirs can include the decedent spouse, children, other relatives and even the state of Kansas. The process in which estate property gets transferred to new owners is generally known as probate.
- If you die in Kansas without creating a last will and testament, your property gets passed on to others according to the state's laws of intestate succession. If, for example, you died leaving behind a spouse and a child, both your spouse and your child are entitled to inherit from your estate. In Kansas, any child who is "of issue" of the decedent is entitled to receive property. An "of issue" child is any child who is related by blood to the decedent, regardless of when the child is born.
- Kansas residents can choose for themselves how to distribute their estates by creating a valid last will and testament. If a residence makes the will and later gets married and has a child, the will is revoked, according to Section 59-610 of the Kansas statutes. This means that the testator has to create a new will after the marriage and/or birth of the child, or his estate passes under the terms of intestate succession.
- A Kansas resident can choose to disinherit a child by leaving that child out of the terms of the will. Children, both born and unborn at the time of the decedent's death, have no automatic right to inherit from a parent. They're entitled to inherit if the parent fails to leave a will or, if after leaving a will, a court determines that the will is invalid.
