The Michigan Supreme Court ruled in the case of In Re Erwin Estate that a wife could inherit as her deceased husband\u2019s \u201csurviving spouse\u201d after her husband\u2019s death, even though they had separated and been living apart for over 30 years. The husband James Erwin died without a will, which means his estate was to be divided and distributed under Michigan\u2019s rules of intestate succession.\u00a0 Since James had children from a previous marriage, and children from his marriage with his wife Maggie at the time of his death, the rules for division and distribution of his estate called for a substantial share of his assets to pass to his wife Maggie, with the rest to be divided between his children.<\/p>\n
One of James\u2019 children challenged Maggie\u2019s position as as \u201csurviving spouse\u201d citing Michigan statute MCL 700.2801(2)(e)(i) which states a spouse is not considered a \u201csurviving spouse\u201d\u00a0 for inheritance purposes if he or she was \u201cwillfully absent\u201d from the marriage for the year or more leading up to the spouse\u2019s death. In order to be \u201cwillfully absent,\u201d an individual must have intended to be completely absent from his or her spouse. To determine whether a spouse was completely absent, courts are required to consider whether under the totality of the circumstances, the spouse was emotionally and physically absent for the requisite period such that it resulted in a practical end to the marriage.<\/p>\n
In this case, the court found that James and Maggie maintained close emotional ties despite not living together for over 3 decades\u00a0 before James\u2019 death.\u00a0 The outcome of the case would have been different if the court believed under all the circumstances that the parties were\u00a0physically\u00a0and<\/em>\u00a0 emotionally absent from each other for at least the one year preceding James\u2019 death.<\/p>\n The court\u2019s ruling opens more uncertainty for families left behind under circumstances where husband and wife were not living together for the year before one spouse\u2019s death, and where the decedent leaves no Will.\u00a0 Determining whether the decedent and his or her spouse maintained enough of an emotional relationship for the surviving spouse to qualify to inherit is a heavily factual issue which will require the trial court to hear testimony from multiple witnesses into the details of family life.\u00a0 This can become time consuming and expensive for all parties.\u00a0 If however the decedent has a valid Last Will in place when he or she dies, there is relatively little uncertainty as to how their assets are to be divided upon their death.\u00a0 There is much less at stake for the family to fight over.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Michigan Supreme Court ruled in the case of In Re Erwin Estate that a wife could inherit as her<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":216,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buyers-law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buyerslaw.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buyerslaw.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buyerslaw.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buyerslaw.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buyerslaw.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=218"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/buyerslaw.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1409,"href":"https:\/\/buyerslaw.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218\/revisions\/1409"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buyerslaw.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buyerslaw.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buyerslaw.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buyerslaw.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}