Uniform Simultaneous Death Act

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
Please discuss this issue on the talk page or replace this tag with a more specific message.
This article has been tagged since December 2006.

The Uniform Simultaneous Death Act is a statute enacted in some United States states to alleviate the problem of simultaneous death when the will doesn't specify what to do upon a simultaneous death.

The Act, originally promulgated in 1940 and amended in 1993, specifies that if two persons die within 120 hours of one another, each is considered to have predeceased the other. As of 2006, 17 states and the District of Columbia have explicitly adopted the Act as written. A number of other states have indirectly adopted the Act because it is included in the Uniform Probate Code.

The purpose of the Uniform Simultaneous Death Act Two scenarios: A. Names a person to receive the inheritance of person who has died intestate. B. Provides a way to determine who inherits the life insurance money if the insured and beneficiary die in a common disaster.

Scenario A describes an example of when the Uniform Simultaneous Death Act must be used to letigate an inheritance issue involving property. Persons A and B are a married, retired couple with no children or grandchildren. The couple died in a plane crash. Both of the families claim the couple's inheritance. Since the couple died at the same time there is no way of determining which person died first. If the couple failed to make a will before their death, the courts must use the Uniform Simultaneous Death Act to resolve the argument between the two families. In accordance with the act, person A predeceased person B but B also predeceased A. Therefore the inheritance is divided equally among the closest living relatives chosen based on their degree of Kinship.

In Scenario B the Uniform Simultaneous Death Act may be used to resolve an insurance case. A husband and wife are driving down the highway. The husband has a life insurance plan through his employer. Both husband and his wife, the beneficiary of his life insurance, are killed in a car crash. The deaths of the husband and wife occurred at or near the same time. The Uniform Simultaneous Death Act can be used to resolve this scenario because it is an issue of inheritance and the insured person as well as the beneficiary died in the incident. The rules for insurance cases differ from those of cases involving personal estates. If the insured and the beneficiary die in the same accident the secondary beneficiary if named in the policy will receive the life insurance money. If there is no secondary beneficiary listed in the policy then it is assumed that the insured person outlived the beneficiary, and therefore the life insurance will be transferred into the estate of the insured. That presumption is made so that the life insurance money is sent to someone in the insured person’s family and not the beneficiary’s.

An individual must outlive another individual by 120 hours or he is considered to have predeceased the first decedent. The purpose of this provision of the Uniform Simultaneous Death Act is to save the heirs of the estate time and money. The statute prevents the inheritance from being transferred more than it has to be. Assume that Person A from the scenario above died immediately, but person B was still found alive and sent to the hospital. Person B outlived A therefore B should inherit the estate, but B dies the next morning in the hospital. Now the estate will lose value because the it will be taxed twice--once when person B inherits, and again when the new heirs inherit the estate. That does not include the possible legal fees that could be deducted from the value of the estate.

Wills prevent the courts from having to use the Uniform Simultaneous Death Act.