South Carolina Code 62-2-803. Effect of homicide on intestate succession, wills, joint assets, life insurance, and beneficiary designations
(b) Any joint tenant who feloniously and intentionally kills another joint tenant thereby effects a severance of the interest of the decedent so that the share of the decedent passes as the decedent’s property and the killer has no rights by survivorship. This provision applies to joint tenancies in real and personal property, joint and multiple-party accounts in banks, savings and loan associations, credit unions, and other institutions, and any other form of co-ownership with survivorship incidents.
Terms Used In South Carolina Code 62-2-803
- Annuity: A periodic (usually annual) payment of a fixed sum of money for either the life of the recipient or for a fixed number of years. A series of payments under a contract from an insurance company, a trust company, or an individual. Annuity payments are made at regular intervals over a period of more than one full year.
- Beneficiary: A person who is entitled to receive the benefits or proceeds of a will, trust, insurance policy, retirement plan, annuity, or other contract. Source: OCC
- Conviction: A judgement of guilt against a criminal defendant.
- Decedent: A deceased person.
- Evidence: Information presented in testimony or in documents that is used to persuade the fact finder (judge or jury) to decide the case for one side or the other.
- Fiduciary: A trustee, executor, or administrator.
- Grantor: The person who establishes a trust and places property into it.
- Guardian: A person legally empowered and charged with the duty of taking care of and managing the property of another person who because of age, intellect, or health, is incapable of managing his (her) own affairs.
- Intestate: Dying without leaving a will.
- Joint tenancy: A form of property ownership in which two or more parties hold an undivided interest in the same property that was conveyed under the same instrument at the same time. A joint tenant can sell his (her) interest but not dispose of it by will. Upon the death of a joint tenant, his (her) undivided interest is distributed among the surviving joint tenants.
- Obligation: An order placed, contract awarded, service received, or similar transaction during a given period that will require payments during the same or a future period.
- Personal property: All property that is not real property.
- Plea: In a criminal case, the defendant's statement pleading "guilty" or "not guilty" in answer to the charges, a declaration made in open court.
- Right of survivorship: The ownership rights that result in the acquisition of title to property by reason of having survived other co-owners.
- Trustee: A person or institution holding and administering property in trust.
(c) A named beneficiary of a bond, life insurance policy, retirement plan, annuity, or other contractual arrangement who feloniously and intentionally kills the principal obligee or the individual upon whose life the policy is issued is not entitled to any benefit under the bond, policy, retirement plan, annuity, or other contractual arrangement, and it becomes payable as though the killer had predeceased the decedent.
(d) Any other acquisition of property or interest by the killer shall be treated in accordance with the principles of this section. A beneficiary whose interest is increased as a result of feloniously and intentionally killing shall be treated in accordance with the principles of this section.
(e) The felonious and intentional killing of the decedent revokes the nomination of the killer in a will or other document nominating or appointing the killer to serve in any fiduciary capacity or representative capacity, including, but not limited to, as personal representative, trustee, agent or guardian.
(f) A final judgment by conviction, or guilty plea establishing criminal accountability of felonious and intentional killing the decedent conclusively establishes that the convicted individual feloniously and intentionally killed the decedent for purposes of this section. In the absence of such final judgment the court, upon the petition of an interested person, must determine whether, upon the preponderance of the evidence standard, the individual would be found responsible for the felonious and intentional killing of the decedent. If the court determines that, under that standard, the individual would be responsible for the felonious and intentional killing of the decedent, the determination conclusively establishes that individual as the decedent’s killer for purposes of this section.
(g) This section does not affect the rights of any person who, before rights under this section have been adjudicated, purchases from the killer, for value and without notice, property which the killer would have acquired except for this section, but the killer is liable for the amount of the proceeds or the value of the property. Any insurance company, bank, or other obligor making payment according to the terms of its policy or obligation is not liable by reason of this section unless prior to payment it has received at its home office or principal address written notice of a claim under this section.
(h) If an individual feloniously and intentionally kills the decedent, and if the killer dies within one hundred twenty hours of the decedent’s death, then the decedent shall be deemed to have survived the killer for purposes of distributing the killer’s estate, including, but not limited to, property passing by intestacy, the killer’s will, any trust of which the killer is a grantor, joint tenancy with right of survivorship and benefits payable under a life insurance policy, retirement plan, annuity or other contractual arrangement.