Yes, an inheritance can be taken away from you, and it can happen at several different points: before the person dies, during probate, while the estate pays its bills, or after the money reaches your hands. The person who wrote the will can rewrite it. A probate judge can throw it out. Creditors, taxes, and Medicaid can drain the estate before you see a dollar. And once you do receive the money, divorce or your own debts can still reach it.
Here is where each of those risks comes from, and what, if anything, limits them.
The Person Who Wrote the Will Can Rewrite It
As long as the person who made the will is alive and mentally competent, they can change it. A codicil amends specific provisions. A new will with a revocation clause wipes out the old one. In some states, a later will that simply contradicts an earlier one overrides it on the conflicting points, even without an explicit revocation. A promise made in a will today has no legal force tomorrow if the document changes.
Revocable living trusts work the same way. The person who set up the trust can swap beneficiaries, change percentages, or dissolve it entirely. The word “revocable” is the giveaway. Only irrevocable trusts lock the terms in, and even those can sometimes be modified by court order or with the agreement of all beneficiaries.
There is one meaningful limit on the power to disinherit: a surviving spouse. Most states give a surviving spouse the right to claim an elective share of the estate, overriding the will. The typical elective share runs from one-third to one-half of the estate, depending on the state and the family situation. A spouse left nothing, or left a token amount, can file for the elective share in probate court. Children, siblings, and friends have no equivalent protection and can be cut out completely without explanation.
A Probate Court Can Invalidate the Will
After the death, an unhappy heir can ask a probate court to throw out the will. Two grounds succeed more than any others: undue influence and lack of testamentary capacity.
Undue influence means someone coerced or manipulated the person who made the will. Courts look for a pattern: a caregiver who isolated the person from family, a new beneficiary who appeared late in life, distribution changes that don’t match what the person had always said they wanted. Suggestion and persuasion aren’t enough. The challenger has to show the influencer overpowered the person’s independent judgment.
Lack of testamentary capacity means the person didn’t have the mental ability to make a valid will at the moment they signed it. The legal bar is lower than most people assume. The person only needed to understand what they owned, who their family members were, and what signing the will would do. Severe dementia or psychosis at the time of signing can invalidate the document. A diagnosis alone doesn’t.
If the court voids the will, the estate falls back to a prior valid version or passes under the state’s default rules for people who die without a will. Those default rules prioritize spouses and children, which can completely reshape who inherits. The window to file is short. Most states set the deadline somewhere between a few months and two years after the will enters probate.
No-Contest Clauses Can Cost You Your Share for Challenging
Some wills and trusts include a no-contest clause, sometimes called an “in terrorem” clause. If you challenge the will and lose, you forfeit whatever you were supposed to receive. A beneficiary who was left $200,000 and files an unsuccessful challenge can walk away with nothing.
Most states enforce these clauses, but many apply a “probable cause” exception: if the challenger had a reasonable basis for filing, the clause isn’t triggered even when the challenge fails. A handful of states refuse to enforce no-contest clauses at all. If you’re considering a challenge and the will contains one, the stakes are higher than just losing the case.
The Slayer Rule
A person who kills someone cannot inherit from them. The law treats the killer as though they died before the victim, and the inheritance passes to whoever would have been next in line. This applies to wills, trusts, life insurance, and intestate succession alike. A murder conviction is the clearest trigger, but some states apply the rule using the lower civil standard of proof, which means an acquittal in criminal court doesn’t automatically protect the inheritance.
Debts, Taxes, and Medicaid Drain the Estate Before You See It
Every estate pays its bills before any beneficiary receives anything. The executor must identify what the deceased owed, notify creditors, and pay valid claims from estate assets. Credit card balances, medical bills, personal loans, mortgages, funeral costs, and taxes all come first. If the estate doesn’t have enough cash, the executor has to sell property to cover the shortfall. Executor compensation also comes out before distributions.
This is where many expected inheritances quietly shrink. An estate that looks substantial on paper can leave beneficiaries with a fraction of what they anticipated once everything is settled.
Medicaid Estate Recovery
Federal law requires every state to seek reimbursement from the estates of people who received Medicaid-funded long-term care after age 55. That covers nursing home stays, home health services, and related hospital and prescription costs. The state’s claim gets paid before beneficiaries do.
The family home is often the largest asset at stake. A Medicaid claim can consume the entire value of a house if the person spent years in a nursing facility. Federal law carves out exceptions: the state cannot recover while a surviving spouse is alive, or while a child under 21 or a blind or disabled child of any age survives. An adult child who lived in the home and provided care for at least two years before the parent entered a nursing facility may qualify for a hardship exception, with specifics varying by state.
Abatement When the Estate Falls Short
When an estate can’t fund every bequest after paying debts, the gifts get reduced through a process called abatement. The cuts follow an order. Residuary gifts (the “everything else” category) get reduced first. General gifts of specific dollar amounts are cut next. Specific bequests of particular items are last. Within each category, the reduction is proportional. A beneficiary expecting $50,000 might receive $30,000, or nothing, depending on how deep the debts run.
Estate Tax and the Inherited Retirement Account Hit
For 2026, the federal estate tax exemption is $15 million per person, so most estates owe no federal estate tax at all.1Internal Revenue Service. What’s New – Estate and Gift Tax Estates above that threshold face a top rate of 40 percent on the excess, and the tax is paid before distributions.
A quieter and much more common tax hit comes from inherited retirement accounts. If you inherit an IRA or 401(k) from someone other than your spouse, you generally must empty the account within ten years of the original owner’s death.2Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – Beneficiary Every dollar you withdraw from a traditional IRA or 401(k) counts as taxable income in the year you take it, which can push you into a higher bracket for years. Exceptions exist for surviving spouses, minor children, disabled individuals, and beneficiaries close in age to the deceased. Most adult children and other non-spouse beneficiaries are stuck with the accelerated timeline.
When the Specific Asset No Longer Exists
If the will leaves you a specific asset, say a house, a car, or a block of stock, and the person sold or disposed of that asset before dying, the bequest simply fails. This is called ademption. You get nothing in place of the missing item unless the will provides an alternative. A will that leaves the family cabin to one child doesn’t give that child the sale proceeds or a substitute if the parent sold the cabin years earlier. Some states soften the rule and allow the beneficiary to receive remaining sale proceeds or replacement property. Many follow the traditional approach where the gift is gone.
Divorce Can Turn Your Inheritance Into Marital Property
An inheritance starts as your separate property, meaning it belongs to you alone during the marriage. That protection disappears the moment you mix inherited money with marital funds. Depositing an inheritance into a joint checking account, using it to renovate a jointly owned home, or paying down a shared mortgage with inherited cash can all convert separate property into marital property a judge can divide in a divorce.
Keeping inherited assets technically separate doesn’t always provide full protection either. If inherited property increases in value during the marriage because of your spouse’s effort or the use of marital funds, courts in many states treat that appreciation as divisible marital property. Inherit a rental house worth $300,000, let your spouse manage it for a decade, and watch it grow to $500,000. The $200,000 increase can be on the table even if the original house stays with you.
The reliable defense is strict separation from day one: an account in your name only, no commingling with household expenses, and clear documentation of the original inheritance and its growth. Once the funds are mixed, tracing them back to the source is expensive, uncertain, and sometimes impossible.
Your Own Creditors Can Reach the Money After You Receive It
An inheritance doesn’t arrive in a protective bubble. Once assets leave the estate and land in your hands, they are treated like any other property you own. A creditor with a court judgment can garnish the account holding your inheritance or place a lien on inherited real estate. A lien can force a sale of the property to satisfy the debt. Medicaid agencies and the IRS also have mechanisms to pursue inherited assets after distribution.
A spendthrift trust is the main tool used to prevent this. If the person who left you the inheritance placed it in a spendthrift trust instead of leaving it outright, creditors generally cannot reach the assets while they remain inside the trust. The protection has limits. Once the trustee distributes money to you, it is reachable again. The trust only protects what it still holds.
Giving Up an Inheritance on Purpose
Sometimes a beneficiary chooses to refuse an inheritance. A formal refusal, called a qualified disclaimer, causes the assets to pass to the next person in line as though the disclaiming beneficiary never existed. People do this for tax planning, to keep assets away from their own creditors, or to send the inheritance directly to their children.
Federal law sets strict requirements. The refusal must be in writing, delivered within nine months of the death, and the person disclaiming cannot have already accepted any benefit from the property.3Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 2518 – Disclaimers The person also cannot direct where the disclaimed assets go. Miss the nine-month window, or deposit even one dividend check from the inherited account, and the ability to disclaim is lost. If you have significant debts or pending litigation when an inheritance is on the way, this is a decision worth making with an attorney before the estate closes.