- Married with no children
- A surviving spouse or reciprocal beneficiary (i.e. the surviving partner of a same sex marriage under Hawaii’s reciprocal beneficiary laws) is generally first to get any assets from the estate; if there are no surviving children or parents of the decedent, they get the whole estate.
- Married with child or children
- 1)If the decedent’s surviving descendants are also descendants of the surviving spouse or reciprocal beneficiary and there is no other descendant of the surviving spouse or reciprocal beneficiary who survives the decedent, the spouse/ beneficiary get the whole estate.
2) If all of the decedent’s surviving descendants are also descendants of the surviving spouse/ beneficiary and that person also has one or more surviving descendants who are not descendants of the decedent, the spousal share is the first $150,000 plus one half of the remaining balance of the estate.
3) If one or more of the decedent’s descendants are not also descendants of the surviving spouse/ beneficiary, the spouse/ beneficiary gets the first $100,000 plus one half of the balance of the intestate estate. - Order of estate distribution if spouse survives
- 1) surviving spouse/ reciprocal beneficiary
2) decedent’s parents
3) descendants of the decedent’s parents
4) grandparents or descendants of the grandparents. - No spouse survives or the deceased was not married but there are other relatives
See #2 – 4 above.
- No surviving relatives
- The estate passes to the state of Hawaii.
- State link
- http://tinyurl.com/dcsnyu
- Special notes
- Any person who fails to survive the decedent by 120 hours is deemed to have predeceased the decedent for purposes of intestate succession.