Arizona Inheritance Laws: Taxes, Spouses, Wills, and Probate

Arizona inheritance laws impose no state estate tax and no inheritance tax, so whatever you receive from a deceased Arizonan passes to you without a cut going to the state. What the law does control is who inherits when there’s no will, how the surviving spouse’s share is calculated under community property rules, what forms a will must take to be valid, and the order in which debts get paid before heirs see anything. Those rules sit in Title 14 of the Arizona Revised Statutes.

No Arizona Estate or Inheritance Tax

Arizona repealed its estate tax for deaths after 2004 and has never had a separate inheritance tax or gift tax.¹ It doesn’t matter how much you inherit or how you were related to the person who died. The state takes nothing.

Federal estate tax is a separate question, but it reaches very few families. For 2026, the federal exemption is $15 million per individual and $30 million for a married couple, with a top rate of 40 percent on the portion above the threshold.² The estate pays it before distribution, not the heirs individually.

One boundary to flag: the inheritance itself isn’t taxed as income, but what you do with it afterward can be. Rental income from inherited property is taxable. If you sell inherited stock or real estate for more than its stepped-up basis (generally the fair market value on the date of death), capital gains tax applies to the profit.

Who Inherits When There Is No Will

When an Arizonan dies without a will, intestate succession takes over and distributes the estate according to a fixed hierarchy of family relationships.³ The same rules fill any gap a will leaves unaddressed. The court moves to the next tier only when no one in the prior tier survives the deceased.

A heir must outlive the deceased by at least 120 hours (five days) to inherit through intestacy. If clear and convincing evidence can’t show that the heir survived that long, the law treats them as having died first.⁴ This matters most in accidents where relatives die close together. The rule doesn’t apply if enforcing it would send the entire estate to the state.

What the Surviving Spouse Receives

Arizona is a community property state, and that fact shapes spousal inheritance more than anything else. Property acquired during the marriage belongs equally to both spouses, with exceptions for gifts, inheritances, and anything acquired after a divorce petition is filed.⁵ Everything a spouse owned before marriage or received as a personal gift or inheritance during it is separate property.

If every one of the deceased’s children is also a child of the surviving spouse, or if the deceased had no children at all, the surviving spouse inherits the entire intestate estate. That includes the deceased’s half of community property plus all separate property.⁶

Blended families get a very different result. If the deceased leaves children from a prior relationship, the surviving spouse takes half of the deceased’s separate property and none of the deceased’s half of community property.⁶ The surviving spouse still keeps their own half of community property, which was always theirs, but the deceased’s community property share and the other half of separate property pass to those children from the earlier relationship. Spouses in second marriages often expect more than this rule actually gives them.

Spousal Allowances During Probate

Three allowances go to the surviving spouse ahead of most creditor claims and on top of anything inherited through the will or intestacy:

A homestead allowance of $18,000. With no surviving spouse, the deceased’s minor and dependent children split it.⁷
Up to $7,000 in exempt property: household furniture, vehicles, appliances, and personal effects beyond any security interests. If qualifying items don’t cover the amount, other estate assets make up the difference.⁸
A reasonable family allowance for the surviving spouse and any minor or dependent children the deceased was supporting, paid during administration. If the estate is too small to satisfy all claims, the allowance runs up to one year.⁹

A will can’t override these allowances, and general creditors wait their turn behind them.

Can You Disinherit a Spouse in Arizona?

Not fully. Because the surviving spouse already owns half of all community property outright, a will can only direct the deceased’s half along with any separate property. The surviving spouse’s own community property share is untouchable through a will.

A separate trap catches people who write a will and marry later. If the will predates the marriage and doesn’t account for the new spouse, Arizona gives that spouse an intestate share as though the will didn’t exist, unless the omission was clearly intentional, the will expressly contemplates a future marriage, or the deceased made outside transfers meant as a substitute.

How Children and Other Relatives Inherit

When there’s no surviving spouse, or for any share the spouse doesn’t take, children come first. Arizona treats biological and legally adopted children the same. The estate passes to descendants “by representation,” meaning shares divide at the first generation with a living member; if one child predeceased the parent but left children, those grandchildren split their parent’s share.¹⁰

If there are no descendants, the estate moves up the family tree:

To both parents equally, or to the surviving parent alone.¹⁰
If no parent survives, to the deceased’s siblings, or to their children by representation.
If no sibling line survives, the estate splits in half between the paternal and maternal sides, going to surviving grandparents on each side or down to aunts, uncles, and cousins by representation. If one side has no takers, the whole estate goes to the other.

Only when nobody fits anywhere in that chain does the estate escheat to the State of Arizona, which rarely happens because the hierarchy reaches far into extended family.

Debts Get Paid Before Heirs

Heirs don’t personally inherit the deceased’s debts. The estate pays what it can, and unpaid creditors absorb the loss when it runs dry. But debts come out before distributions, so a heavily indebted estate can leave little or nothing for the family.

When the estate can’t cover everything, Arizona sets this priority:

Administration costs and expenses, including court fees, attorney fees, and personal representative compensation
Reasonable funeral expenses
Debts and taxes with preference under federal law
Medical and hospital expenses from the deceased’s last illness
Debts and taxes with preference under Arizona law
All other claims¹¹

Within a class, no creditor outranks another, so if the money runs short at a given tier, those creditors share proportionally. The spousal allowances described above sit ahead of general creditors.

Probate must stay open at least four months to let creditors file claims. Informal probates usually wrap in six to eight months; formal or supervised proceedings can run past a year.

Property That Skips Probate

Many assets transfer directly to a named beneficiary by operation of law, regardless of what any will says or what intestacy would do.¹² The common ones:

Life insurance policies with a named beneficiary
Retirement accounts such as 401(k)s and IRAs with beneficiary designations
Payable-on-death bank accounts and transfer-on-death brokerage accounts
Property held in joint tenancy with right of survivorship, which vests automatically in the surviving co-owner

These transfers run on contract rather than probate, so they move faster and stay out of the public court record. The downside is that an outdated beneficiary designation can send money to an ex-spouse or someone you no longer intend to benefit. Review these after any marriage, divorce, or birth.

Beneficiary Deeds for Real Estate

Arizona allows a beneficiary deed, which lets a property owner name someone to receive their real estate at death without probate.¹³ The deed must be recorded with the county recorder before the owner dies. It has no effect during life, so the owner can still sell, refinance, or mortgage the property freely.

A beneficiary deed can be revoked anytime by recording a new document before death, and if multiple beneficiary deeds exist for the same property, only the last recorded one controls.¹³ A will does not override a beneficiary deed. If the two conflict about the same property, the deed wins.

Small Estate Shortcuts

Arizona offers streamlined collection for smaller estates. If the deceased’s personal property, minus debts secured by it, totals $200,000 or less, a successor can collect the assets using a simple affidavit instead of opening probate.¹⁴ The claimant must wait at least 30 days after death and must affirm in the affidavit that funeral and last-illness expenses have been paid and no probate case is pending.

A separate affidavit process exists for real property, but it cannot be filed until at least six months after death. Additional conditions apply, including that no federal estate tax is owed and all unsecured debts have been paid. For qualifying estates, these alternatives resolve matters in weeks rather than months.

What Makes a Will Valid in Arizona

A will lets you override Arizona’s default rules and direct your assets where you choose. A standard paper will needs three things to hold up: it must be in writing, signed by the person making it (or by someone else at their direction and in their presence), and signed by at least two witnesses within a reasonable time after they watched the signing or heard the person acknowledge the will.¹⁵

Handwritten (Holographic) Wills

Arizona recognizes handwritten wills without any witnesses, provided the signature and the material provisions are in the handwriting of the person making the will.¹⁶ They give some protection to people who write their wishes out informally, but they draw more challenges over authenticity and interpretation than typed, witnessed wills.

Electronic Wills

Arizona also allows electronic wills. An electronic will must be readable as text at signing, include the electronic signature of the person making it, and carry the electronic signatures of at least two witnesses, who can be physically present or electronically present by video from within the United States.¹⁷ The record must show the date each person signed and include a copy of the signer’s current government-issued photo ID.

1
Arizona Department of Revenue. Estate Tax Publication 2006
2
Internal Revenue Service. Estate Tax
3
Arizona Legislature. Arizona Revised Statutes 14-2101 – Intestate Estate Modification by Will
4
Arizona Legislature. Arizona Code 14-2104 – Heirs Surviving of Decedent Time Requirement Presumption Exception
5
Arizona Legislature. Arizona Revised Statutes 25-211 – Property Acquired During Marriage as Community Property
6
Arizona Legislature. Arizona Revised Statutes 14-2102 – Intestate Share of Surviving Spouse
7
Arizona Legislature. Arizona Revised Statutes 14-2402 – Homestead Allowance
8
Arizona Legislature. Arizona Revised Statutes 14-2403 – Exempt Property Value Priority
9
Arizona Legislature. Arizona Revised Statutes 14-2404 – Family Allowance Use Length Priority Termination by Death
10
Arizona Legislature. Arizona Revised Statutes 14-2103 – Heirs Other Than Surviving Spouse Share in Estate
11
Arizona Legislature. Arizona Revised Statutes 14-3805 – Priority of Claims
12
Arizona Legislature. Arizona Revised Statutes 14-6101 – Nonprobate Transfers on Death Nontestamentary Nature
13
Arizona Legislature. Arizona Revised Statutes 33-405 – Beneficiary Deeds Recording Definitions
14
Arizona Legislature. Arizona Revised Statutes 14-3971 – Collection of Personal Property by Affidavit
15
Arizona Legislature. Arizona Revised Statutes 14-2502 – Execution of Paper Wills Witnessed Wills Holographic Wills Testamentary Intent
16
Arizona Legislature. Arizona Revised Statutes 14-2503 – Holographic Will
17
Arizona Legislature. Arizona Revised Statutes 14-2518 – Electronic Will