When There's No Will, Florida Has One for You
Dying "intestate" simply means dying without a valid will. It doesn't mean your assets sit unclaimed — it means Chapter 732 of the Florida Statutes, Part I, "Intestate Succession," supplies a default distribution plan in place of your own. The estate still goes through the same probate process as it would with a will, formal or summary administration depending on size, with a personal representative appointed and creditors given a chance to file claims. The only thing that changes is who the law says inherits, and in what shares — and that default order rarely matches what most people would have chosen for themselves.
What Your Spouse Inherits — and Why It Depends on Your Children
A common assumption is that a surviving spouse automatically inherits everything. That's true in some situations, but not all of them. Under Florida's intestacy statute, your spouse's share depends on whether you have descendants, and whose descendants they are:
If you have no surviving descendants, your spouse inherits the entire estate. If you do have descendants, but every one of them is also your spouse's child and your spouse has no children from anywhere else, your spouse still inherits everything. But if you have a descendant who isn't also your spouse's — most commonly, a child from a prior relationship — your spouse's share drops to one-half, with the other half going to your descendants. The same one-half split applies in reverse: if all of your children are shared with your spouse, but your spouse also has children of their own from elsewhere, your spouse again receives only half.
In practice, this means second marriages and blended families are exactly where the "my spouse gets everything" assumption breaks down. A remarried parent with children from a first marriage who dies without a will typically leaves a surviving spouse with only half the estate — not the whole thing — with the children splitting the rest.
If There's No Spouse: The Order Other Relatives Inherit
Whatever portion doesn't pass to a surviving spouse — or the entire estate, if there's no spouse — descends in a fixed order. Descendants come first, divided per stirpes (meaning a deceased child's share passes down to that child's own descendants, rather than being absorbed by surviving siblings). If there are no descendants, the estate goes to your parents, equally, or to whichever one survives you. If there are no parents, it passes to your siblings and the descendants of any siblings who predeceased you — though a lesser-known wrinkle here is that half-siblings inherit only half of what full siblings inherit. If none of that applies, the estate splits between your paternal and maternal sides, first to grandparents, then to aunts, uncles, and their descendants. If no relative can be found at all, the property ultimately escheats to the State of Florida.
Homestead Property Plays by a Different Set of Rules
Florida's homestead protection is written into the state Constitution, not just the probate code, and it treats your primary residence differently from every other asset in your estate — intestate or not. As a general matter, the Constitution doesn't even let you will your homestead away from a surviving spouse or minor child; if you have either, an attempt to leave the house to someone else in your will is largely ineffective.
When there's no will and you're survived by a spouse and descendants, the homestead doesn't simply split the way other property does under the statute above. Instead, your surviving spouse receives a life estate in the home — the right to live there for the rest of their life — while your descendants hold the remainder interest, meaning they own it outright once your spouse passes. Florida law gives the surviving spouse an alternative: within six months of the decedent's death, they can elect to take an outright one-half interest as a tenant in common with the descendants instead of the life estate. Either way, this is a meaningfully different outcome than an outright fifty-fifty split, and in blended families it can leave a surviving spouse living in a home they don't fully own, with a stepchild (or a former spouse's children) holding the remainder.
Adopted Children and Children Born Outside Marriage
Florida's intestacy statute treats a legally adopted child as a full descendant of the adopting parent for inheritance purposes, and generally cuts off inheritance rights from the child's birth parents — with one common exception: when a stepparent adopts their spouse's child, the child keeps inheritance rights from the birth parent who's still married to the adopting stepparent. A child born outside marriage automatically inherits from their mother. Inheriting from the father requires establishing paternity — through a marriage ceremony between the parents (even one that turns out to be legally void), a court adjudication of paternity, or the father's written acknowledgment.
Why the Default Plan Rarely Matches What People Actually Want
Laid out together, Florida's intestacy rules tend to surprise people in a few consistent ways. An unmarried partner, no matter how long the relationship or how intertwined the finances, inherits nothing under this statute. A stepchild who was never legally adopted inherits nothing, regardless of how they were raised. A surviving spouse in a blended family often ends up with half the estate and a life estate in the home, rather than full ownership of either. None of these outcomes require a poorly drafted will to happen — they happen automatically, by default, the moment someone dies without one. A will, or a properly funded trust, is what lets you replace Florida's default plan with your own.