The slayer rule in inheritance law bars anyone who intentionally and unlawfully kills another person from inheriting from that person, collecting their life insurance, or receiving any other financial benefit tied to the death. The principle is simple: no one should profit from a killing they committed. Nearly every state has written some version of the rule into its probate code, and federal common law extends the same idea to pensions and other benefits governed by federal law.
What Kind of Killing Triggers the Rule
The rule only applies when the killing is both felonious and intentional. Murder and voluntary manslaughter clearly qualify. Accidents, negligent homicide, and involuntary manslaughter do not, because the person who caused the death never set out to kill. A fatal car crash caused by distracted driving is a tragedy, not a slayer-rule case. Poisoning a spouse to collect on a life insurance policy is the textbook scenario the rule was built for.
Self-defense and defense of others also fall outside the rule, because those killings are legally justified rather than criminal. Legal insanity is treated similarly in many states, since the intent the rule requires is considered absent when the killer was found insane at the time of the act.
You Don’t Need a Murder Conviction
A criminal conviction is the cleanest way to invoke the rule. Most statutes treat a conviction for the killing as conclusive proof, and the forfeiture follows automatically in probate.
But a conviction is not required. If prosecutors never brought charges, or if the killer was acquitted, interested parties can still ask the probate court to apply the slayer rule in a separate civil proceeding. The standard of proof is lower there than in criminal court. Most states follow the Uniform Probate Code and require only a preponderance of the evidence, meaning the court finds it more likely than not that the person committed the killing. A smaller group of states uses the tougher “clear and convincing evidence” standard. Both are well below “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
The practical result: someone can be acquitted of murder and still lose every inheritance tied to the victim’s death. The split standards make this outcome fairly common in cases where the criminal evidence was close.
What the Rule Reaches
The slayer rule covers almost anything the killer would have received because of the victim’s death:
- Bequests under the victim’s will or distributions from the victim’s trust.
- Shares the killer would have taken under state intestacy laws if the victim died without a will.
- Life insurance proceeds where the killer was named beneficiary. The money goes to a contingent beneficiary or to the estate.
- Property held jointly with a right of survivorship. The killer does not automatically take the whole thing, even though survivorship would normally pass it to them.
- Payable-on-death bank accounts, transfer-on-death investment accounts, and similar beneficiary designations.
ERISA Pensions and Retirement Plans
Employer-sponsored pensions and retirement accounts governed by ERISA raise a federal preemption question, because ERISA generally overrides conflicting state law. Federal courts have resolved this by holding that federal common law incorporates the slayer rule’s core principle even where ERISA itself is silent. The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation applies the same position: a surviving spouse convicted of murdering the plan participant is ineligible for the qualified joint and survivor annuity that ERISA-covered plans must provide.1Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. Slayer Not Entitled to QJSA Benefit
Social Security Survivor Benefits
Federal regulations bar anyone convicted of feloniously and intentionally causing another person’s death from drawing Social Security survivor benefits on that person’s earnings record. The Social Security Administration’s published ruling confirms that a conviction for a felony involving the intentional killing of the wage earner cuts off entitlement to any survivor benefits based on that record.2Social Security Administration. SSR 87-23
Veterans Affairs Benefits
The VA takes the same approach. Under federal regulation, a person who intentionally and wrongfully caused a veteran’s death is not entitled to pension, compensation, or dependency and indemnity compensation by reason of that death.3eCFR. 38 CFR 3.11 – Homicide
Where the Disqualified Assets Go
Once the rule disqualifies a beneficiary, the estate is distributed as though the killer had died before the victim. The killer is simply erased from the chain, and the property passes to whoever is next in line under the will, trust, or state intestacy statute. If the will left everything to the killer with no backup, the estate typically passes as if there were no will at all.
Jointly held property gets handled differently. When two people own something as joint tenants with survivorship, the full interest would normally pass to the survivor on the other’s death. The slayer rule severs that survivorship right. Courts in many jurisdictions treat the property as if it had been held as tenants in common, so each person owned a separate half. The victim’s half passes to their estate; the killer keeps their own half. Some courts go further and impose a constructive trust on part or all of the killer’s interest for the benefit of the victim’s heirs, though the specifics vary by state.
Can the Killer’s Children Still Inherit?
Because the rule treats the killer as having predeceased the victim, the killer’s own children or grandchildren usually step into the killer’s place under the state’s representation or anti-lapse rules. If a son kills his mother and is treated as predeceased, the son’s children typically inherit the share the son would have taken. The rule aims to prevent the wrongdoer from profiting, not to punish innocent descendants. Specific outcomes still depend on the will’s language and the state’s succession statutes; some will provisions can effectively cut out the killer’s descendants along with the killer.
Mercy Killings and Aid in Dying
Physician-assisted death is legal in roughly a dozen states. A family member who helps a terminally ill loved one die under a lawful aid-in-dying statute is not committing a felonious killing, and the slayer rule should not apply. Mercy killings outside that legal framework are harder. Most slayer statutes were written long before aid-in-dying laws existed, and their broad language about “intentional killing” could sweep in a family member who acted out of compassion. Some proposed model statutes carve out an explicit assisted-suicide exception when the decedent had a permanent and incurable condition, but no uniform legislative answer exists. The result depends on the state.
Elder Abuse Extensions
A handful of states, including California, Florida, and Nevada, have extended slayer-style disinheritance to cover elder abuse. The traditional slayer rule can miss these cases because a death from chronic abuse or neglect may not meet the “intentional killing” standard. Abuse-specific statutes close that gap by treating a proven abuser as predeceased when there is clear and convincing evidence of the abuse, without requiring proof that the abuser meant to cause death.
Who Raises the Issue, and When
The slayer rule does not enforce itself. Someone has to raise it in probate court. Any interested party in the estate can petition to disqualify a beneficiary: the executor or administrator, other named beneficiaries, and heirs who would inherit if the killer were cut out. If there was a conviction, the court’s job is largely mechanical. Without one, the petitioner has to put on enough evidence to meet the state’s civil standard.
Raise it early. There is no single national deadline, and the applicable time limits usually track the state’s general probate claim deadlines rather than a slayer-specific statute of limitations. Once the estate has been distributed, pulling assets back from someone who already received them is far harder than blocking the distribution in the first place. Anyone who suspects a beneficiary caused the decedent’s death should talk to a probate attorney before the estate closes.