Tennessee Intestate Succession Chart: Spouse, Children, Heirs

When a Tennessee resident dies without a will, the state’s intestate succession statutes decide who inherits. The surviving spouse and children take first, splitting the estate under a formula that depends on how many children there are. If no spouse or descendants survive, the estate moves down a fixed order: parents, then siblings and their children, then grandparents and their descendants. Only assets that pass through probate are affected.

Which Property the Intestacy Rules Control

These rules only apply to property the decedent owned individually that would otherwise go through probate. Anything with its own transfer mechanism passes outside the system, no matter what the statute says. That includes jointly owned property with right of survivorship, life insurance with a named beneficiary, retirement accounts and IRAs with beneficiary designations, payable-on-death bank accounts, and transfer-on-death investment accounts. Property held by spouses as tenants by the entirety goes automatically to the surviving spouse and never enters probate at all.

If most of a person’s wealth sits in accounts with beneficiary designations, the intestacy rules may end up controlling very little.

What the Surviving Spouse Inherits

If the decedent left no children, grandchildren, or other descendants, the surviving spouse inherits the entire intestate estate.¹

If descendants also survive, the spouse takes either one-third of the estate or a child’s share (an equal portion alongside the children), whichever is greater.¹ In practice:

With one child, the spouse and child each take half. A child’s share is 50%, which beats one-third.
With two children, the spouse and each child take one-third. The two calculations produce the same result.
With three or more children, the spouse takes one-third and the children divide the remaining two-thirds equally. One-third is now larger than any single child’s share.

This calculation applies only to probate assets. Anything that already passed to the spouse by joint title or beneficiary designation is separate and doesn’t count against the intestate share.

What the Children Inherit

Whatever remains after the spouse’s share goes to the decedent’s descendants. If every surviving descendant is a child of the decedent, they split the remainder equally.¹ If the decedent left no spouse, the children take the entire estate on the same terms.

When a child has already died but left descendants of their own, Tennessee applies per stirpes distribution.² The deceased child’s share drops down to that child’s descendants and is split equally among them. If a decedent had three children and one predeceased leaving two grandchildren, each surviving child takes one-third and each grandchild takes one-sixth.

When There Is No Spouse or Descendant

If neither a spouse nor any descendant survives, the estate moves down a statutory ladder:

Parents come first. If both are alive, they split the estate equally; if only one survives, that parent takes everything.¹
If no parent survives, the estate goes to the decedent’s siblings equally. A predeceased sibling’s share passes by representation to that sibling’s children, so nieces and nephews step into their parent’s place.¹
If no siblings or their descendants survive, the estate splits in half between the paternal and maternal sides. On each side the grandparents take first if living; otherwise that half passes to their descendants (the decedent’s aunts, uncles, and cousins) by representation. If nobody survives on one side, the whole estate goes to the other.¹

Half-siblings inherit the same as full siblings. Tennessee draws no line between relatives of half and whole blood.³

Adopted Children, Stepchildren, and Children Born Outside Marriage

Adopted Children

Once an adoption is final, the adopted child is treated the same as a biological child for inheritance purposes and can inherit from the adoptive parents and their relatives. Adoption generally cuts off inheritance rights from the biological family. One exception matters: if a biological parent died before the adoption occurred, the child keeps the right to inherit from or through that deceased biological parent.⁴ This shows up most often when a surviving parent remarries and the new spouse adopts the child.

Stepchildren

Stepchildren have no automatic inheritance rights in Tennessee. A stepparent who raised a child from infancy owes that child nothing under intestacy law, and the child has no claim on the stepparent’s estate. Only formal adoption or a will changes this result, and it catches families by surprise more than almost any other rule.

Children Born Outside Marriage

A child born outside marriage inherits from the mother automatically. Inheriting from the father requires establishing the parent-child relationship in one of two ways:⁵

The biological parents participated in a marriage ceremony before or after the child’s birth, even if the marriage was technically void.
Paternity was adjudicated by a court before the father’s death, or is proven afterward by clear and convincing evidence. A claim to establish paternity after death must be filed within one year of the father’s death or within the time set in the estate’s published notice to creditors, whichever comes first.

Even when paternity is proven after death, the father’s relatives cannot inherit from or through the child unless the father openly treated the child as his own and did not refuse to support the child.⁵ The child gains inheritance rights upward; the father’s side doesn’t automatically gain rights the other direction.

Rules That Can Change Who Inherits

The 120-Hour Survival Rule

An heir who dies within 120 hours (five days) of the decedent is treated as having predeceased them. This prevents property from bouncing through a second estate almost immediately, and it applies to intestate succession, the elective share, the homestead allowance, the year’s support allowance, and exempt property. Survival must be shown by clear and convincing evidence; if timing is genuinely uncertain, the law presumes neither survived the other. Courts will not apply the rule if doing so would cause the estate to escheat to the state.

Posthumous Heirs

A relative conceived before the decedent’s death but born afterward inherits as if born during the decedent’s lifetime. This most often protects a child whose parent dies during the pregnancy. Children conceived after death through stored genetic material fall outside this language and may not qualify without additional legal steps, so families in that situation should consult a probate attorney rather than assume the child will inherit.

The Slayer Rule

Anyone who feloniously and intentionally kills the decedent forfeits all rights to the estate, including any intestate share, the elective share, the homestead allowance, exempt property, and the family allowance.⁶ The killer is treated as having predeceased the decedent, so the estate passes as if that person didn’t exist. A conviction for murder, felony murder, or voluntary manslaughter is conclusive; without a conviction, the killing can still be proven by a lower civil standard. Accidental killings and self-defense don’t trigger forfeiture, and the killer’s own descendants are not punished. They can inherit the share the killer would have taken.

Extra Protections for a Surviving Spouse

Elective Share

A surviving spouse can claim an elective share instead of the intestate share if the elective share works out larger. The percentage of the net estate scales with the length of the marriage:⁷

Less than 3 years of marriage: 10%
3 years but less than 6: 20%
6 years but less than 9: 30%
9 years or more: 40%

In most intestacy cases the intestate share is larger. The elective share becomes relevant mainly when there are many children and one-third feels inadequate, or when a spouse wants to override certain distributions.

Homestead and Year’s Support

Certain allowances come off the top of the estate ahead of most creditors and in addition to the intestate share. The homestead exemption protects up to $35,000 of equity in the principal residence, or up to $52,500 for a jointly owned home, and continues to benefit the surviving spouse and minor children as long as they use the property as their principal residence. The year’s support allowance provides a reasonable cash allowance for the spouse’s maintenance during the first year after death, with no fixed dollar figure. The court sets what is reasonable based on the prior standard of living and the estate’s condition. If there is no surviving spouse, the year’s support goes to the decedent’s unmarried minor children.

When No Heirs Can Be Found

If no heir exists at any level of the hierarchy, the estate escheats to the state of Tennessee.⁸ Escheat is rare in practice because the statute reaches out to distant relatives (great-aunts, second cousins, remote descendants of grandparents) before the state takes anything, and the 120-hour rule itself yields when applying it would otherwise cause an escheat. Escheated property is administered under Tennessee’s unclaimed property statutes, and someone with a legitimate claim should consult a probate attorney quickly because the window to recover from the state is limited. Almost any escheat can be prevented with a basic will.

1
Justia Law. Tennessee Code 31-2-104 – Share of Surviving Spouse and Heirs
2
Justia Law. Tennessee Code 31-2-106 – Representation
3
Justia Law. Tennessee Code 31-2-107 – Kindred of Half Blood
4
Justia Law. Tennessee Code 36-1-121 – Effect of Adoption
5
Justia Law. Tennessee Code 31-2-105 – Establishment of Parent-Child Relationship
6
Justia Law. Tennessee Code 31-1-106 – Effect of Felonious and Intentional Killing
7
Justia Law. Tennessee Code 31-4-101 – Right to Elective Share
8
Justia Law. Tennessee Code 31-2-110 – Escheat