Spouses, children and parents, or other persons, who may be heirs of each other, sometimes die because of common accidents or disasters. As well, even in the absence of a common disaster or accident, sometimes spouses die within a short time of each other. When those tragic events or nearly contemporaneous deaths occur, the Tennessee Uniform Simultaneous Death Act may be applicable.
Under the Act, the operative time period is 120 hours, or 5 days. If a spouse dies within 120 hours of his or her wife or husband, then, that spouse is deemed to have predeceased the other spouse for purposes of receiving homestead allowance, year’s support allowance, exempt property, and elective share. The presumption also applies, importantly, for purposes of determining who the heirs are when the spouse who died first died without a will (when someone dies without a will, his or her property is distributed according to the laws of intestate succession).
Here is an example of how the Act would apply in a situation where the spouse who died first died without a will: Husband and Wife were married late in life and each has a child by another marriage who is not the child of the other spouse. Wife has an investment account worth $300,000 which she, alone, owns. As well, Wife has made no payable on death or survivorship designation on the account. Neither Husband nor Wife has a will.
Husband and Wife are in an accident. Wife dies at the scene of the accident and Husband dies two days later. If not for the Act, Husband’s child would inherit one-half of Wife’s account, or $150,000. This is so because, under Tennessee intestate succession law, Husband would be entitled to one-half of the $300,000, and Wife’s child would be entitled to the other one-half.