What Happens If You Die Without a Will in Palm Beach, FL

When someone in Palm Beach County dies without a will, Florida does not seize the estate, despite the common myth. Instead, a fixed legal formula decides everything: who inherits, who administers the estate, and how long it all takes. This is called dying “intestate,” and the result is rarely what the person would have chosen. Here is exactly how it plays out.

Florida Decides Who Inherits

Without a will, the intestacy statutes (Ch. 732) take over. The order is set by law, not by your relationships:

• If you have a spouse and no descendants, the spouse takes everything.
• If you and your spouse share all the same children, the spouse still takes everything.
• If either of you has children from another relationship, the spouse and descendants split the estate.
• With no spouse, assets pass to descendants, then parents, then siblings, and outward.

An unmarried partner, a close friend, or a favorite charity receives nothing under intestacy, regardless of your intentions.

The Court Picks Your Personal Representative

With no will, no one is named to run the estate. The Palm Beach County probate court appoints a personal representative, usually the surviving spouse or a majority of heirs. When relatives disagree about who should serve, that dispute becomes a contested court matter, adding months and legal fees before anyone touches a dime.

The Homestead Trap

Your home triggers Florida’s constitutional homestead rules (Art. X, §4). If you leave a spouse and minor children, the property does not pass freely. The law typically gives the surviving spouse a life estate or a one-half interest, with the remainder to descendants, an arrangement many families find awkward and that often forces hard decisions about keeping or selling the Palm Beach home.

Probate Still Happens, Either Way

Dying without a will does not avoid probate; it usually complicates it. Florida offers two paths. Summary administration is a faster, lighter process available for smaller estates or when the person has been deceased more than two years. Formal administration is the full court process, used for larger or contested estates. Intestate estates with disputes tend to land in formal administration, which is the slower and more expensive of the two.

The Real Cost and Timeline

An intestate estate carries court costs, personal representative fees, and attorney fees, the same as a will-based estate, but disputes over who inherits or serves drive those numbers up. Summary administration can sometimes wrap in a few months; a contested formal administration in Palm Beach County can stretch well past a year. The absence of a will is what turns a routine process into a contested one.

What Passes Outside Intestacy

Not everything is controlled by the intestacy formula. Life insurance, retirement accounts, and payable-on-death accounts go to named beneficiaries. Jointly titled property and tenancy-by-the-entireties assets pass to the survivor. But anything titled in your name alone, with no beneficiary, falls into the intestate estate.

Talk to a Florida Attorney

The good news: avoiding all of this takes a single, valid Florida will, and there is no state estate or inheritance tax to plan around. If you live in Palm Beach and have not put a plan in place, consult a licensed Florida estate planning attorney so the law’s default formula never decides your family’s future for you.