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Old Virginia "Slayer Statute" Prevents Slayer’s Descendants from Inheriting
(October 2011) By Colleen K. O’Brien
For more information, contact Paul
Farquharson.
Bell v. Casper No. 101004, (Supreme Court of Virginia, September 16, 2011) | View pdf
In 2005, the Decedent was shot and killed by her son. The
decedent was survived by her mother, the murderer, and the murderer’s children.
The Decedent’s will identified her son, the murderer, as the sole heir. The
murderer’s children brought a declaratory judgment action seeking a judicial
determination that their father was a slayer for purposes of the Slayer Statute,
and that they be named as heirs of the victim’s estate. The Decedent’s mother
opposed the children’s action, and sought to be declared the sole beneficiary of
the estate. The issue was that the Slayer Statute in force at the time of the
Decedent’s death was modified in 2008, and the case would be decided by
whichever version of the statute was deemed controlling.
The prior version of the statute (Va. Code Ann. § 55-402
(2003); Va. Code Ann. § 64.1-1) stated that neither the slayer nor any person
“claiming through him” shall acquire property or receive benefits as a result of
the death of the decedent. In 2008, the General Assembly amended the Slayer
Statute (Va. Code Ann. § 55-403), to provide that an heir who establishes
kinship to the decedent by way of his kinship to the slayer shall be deemed to
be claiming from the decedent and “not through the slayer.” The Slayer’s
children argued that the later version of the statute controlled and that they
should inherit the entire estate. The mother argued that the earlier version of
the statute should control and that she was the sole heir.
The Court started by recognizing the basic principle
that the retrospective application of law is disfavored and that a law
should operate prospectively unless there was a contrary legislative intent.
Moreover, it was well-established policy in Virginia that the law in
existence at the time of the decedent’s death governed estate distribution.
Therefore, the Court held that the former version of the Slayer Statute, the
version in effect when the Decedent died in 2005, controlled the
distribution of the estate. The Court concluded that the rightful heir was
the Decedent’s mother.
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