Legal Question in Criminal Law in Virginia

Hello. Sorry to bother you with a strictly inquisitive question, but we at the office have been debating this for hours:

I don't know if you're familiar with this case, but our debate stems from it:

http://articles.cnn.com/2011-01-04/justice/new.york.inheritance_1_assets-murder-dianne-edwards?_s=PM:CRIME

So our question is, can someone convicted of murder inherit money in this manner? My contention is, it isn't like a job where you have to note whether or not you have a felony, you're just getting money, and my coworkers don't think so. So short of someone explicitly putting in their will that so and so cannot receive their money should they pass away, is there anything legally stopping someone from killing someone just to cash in? Legally, what's to stop a child from murdering their parents just to get an inheritance? And let's say they were tried and convicted of murder, would they get the money anyway or are they legally prohibited from getting it?

Thanks for any light you can shed on our burning question!


Asked on 1/06/11, 12:49 pm

3 Answers from Attorneys
Edward Hoffman Law Offices of Edward A. Hoffman

Murderers ordinarily cannot inherit directly from their victims, even if they are specifically named in the victim's will. But that isn't what happened here. The victim's estate went to her daughter, who was the killer's wife. The daughter then died, leaving her husband as her sole heir.

I'm not aware of any law that would bar the killer from inheriting his wife's assets, even the ones that used to belong to the victim. But this is not an everyday situation, and it may turn out that there are ways to prevent it. The victim's other relatives and their lawyers seem to believe they can prevent the killer from inheriting his mother-in-law's assets. Time will tell whether they are right.

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Answered on 1/11/11, 12:59 pm
Michael Hendrickson Law Office Michael E. Hendrickson

Virginia law under what is known as the slayer statute found at Va. Code Secs.

55.401-415 would bar all such inheritances.

The Code was amended in July of 2008 to include voluntary manslaughter as a disqualifying crime, and, in another change, not just the slayer but also any transferee, assignee, or other person claiming through the slayer would not be entitled to acquire any property or benefits resulting from or arising out of the death of the slayer's victim.

The law regarding this issue may be different in California where attorney Hoffman is licensed to practice.

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Answered on 1/11/11, 2:44 pm
Edward Hoffman Law Offices of Edward A. Hoffman

The statutes Mr. Hendrickson cites disqualifu the killer and anyone claiming through the killer from inheriting the victim's assets. Here, though, the opposite is happening. The killer is claiming the assets through the estate of his late wife. (He may not even be "claiming" them at all if she affirmatively chose to give them to him in a will.) Those statutes deal with inheritances from the victim, not to subsequent inheritances from someone who inherited from the victim. Whether they would apply a case like this one is debatable, but my sense is that they wouldn't.

As Mr. Hendrickson notes, I am not licensed in Virginia and he is. But the case you write about is in New York, where neither of us can practice and where the statutes he cites don't govern.

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Answered on 1/11/11, 5:25 pm


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