The Default Plan: A Cold Look at How Oregon Judges Allocate Assets Without a Will
tl;dr: The State’s One-Size-Fits-All Will
If you don’t write a will, the State of Oregon writes one for you. This default script is called intestate succession, and it does not care about your nuanced relationships, your unmarried partner, or your verbal promises. It is a rigid, mathematical blueprint that forces a probate judge to hand your assets to specific biological relatives, regardless of whether you actually talked to them.
Intestate Succession: The Default State Blueprint
Intestate succession is the statutory framework that governs how a person’s estate is distributed when they die without a valid last will and testament.
In Oregon, this process is dictated entirely by ORS 112.025 to 112.055. The probate court does not look at your old text messages, call your friends to ask what your intentions were, or weigh who deserves what. The judge simply opens the Oregon Revised Statutes, opens your family tree, and applies a cold mathematical formula.
Scenario 1: The Blended Family Split (ORS 112.025)
There is a common myth that if you are married, your spouse automatically inherits everything when you die. Under Oregon law, that is only true if all of your children are also your surviving spouse’s biological or adopted children.
If you have a blended family, the legal machinery shifts dramatically:
The Shared-Children Rule (ORS 112.025(1)): If you die leaving a spouse and children, and all those children are shared with that spouse, your spouse gets 100% of the intestate estate. The law assumes your spouse will use that wealth to take care of your shared kids.
The Blended-Family Split (ORS 112.025(2)): If you die leaving a spouse and at least one child from a previous relationship, the estate is chopped straight down the middle. Your surviving spouse receives exactly one-half of your intestate estate, and your children from the prior relationship split the remaining one-half.
This means if you own a home or a business in your individual name, your spouse and your kids from a past life suddenly find themselves forced into accidental co-ownership of your assets.
Scenario 2: The Unmarried Partner and the Joint Mortgage
Oregon’s intestate laws were built for a traditional family model. They have failed to catch up to modern reality. An unmarried partner has zero inheritance rights under Oregon’s default intestate rules. It does not matter if you lived together for twenty years, shared a dog, or wore matching rings. In the eyes of the probate court, an unmarried partner is a legal stranger.
Consider a classic Portland horror story: an unmarried couple without kids buys a house together. Both names are on the mortgage, but due to a paperwork oversight at closing, the deed lists them as tenants in common rather than joint tenants with right of survivorship.
If one partner dies without a will:
The deceased partner’s 50% ownership of the house does not automatically pass to the surviving partner.
Instead, under ORS 112.045, that 50% share shoots straight to the deceased partner’s parents or siblings.
The surviving partner is now legally co-owning a house with their late partner’s parents, while remaining 100% liable for the mortgage payments.
The Statutory Hierarchy: Where the Money Flows
When there is no surviving spouse, or if there are assets left over after the spouse’s share is carved out, ORS 112.045 establishes a strict, descending waterfall of who gets your property:
| Priority | Beneficiary Group | Conditions |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lineal Descendants | Your children, grandchildren, etc., divided equally by generation. |
| 2 | Surviving Parents | If you have no kids, everything goes to your parents. |
| 3 | Siblings (or their issue) | If your parents are gone, your brothers, sisters, nieces, or nephews inherit. |
| 4 | Grandparents (or their issue) | If no closer relatives exist, the court hunts for aunts, uncles, or cousins. |
| 5 | The State of Oregon | If the court finds absolutely zero blood relatives, your estate escheats to the common school fund. |
Drawing Your Own Map
The heavy machinery of the Oregon probate system is entirely predictable. If you leave your estate to the default plan, the state will execute its script with mechanical efficiency.
I don’t look at estate planning as a way to control your family from beyond the grave; I look at it as a way to protect the people you love from being crushed by the gears of statutory defaults. If you want to decide exactly who gets what -- and keep your partner from co-owning a bungalow with your parents -- you have to override the state’s script with a map of your own making.
