Opinion ID: 1175533
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: IN GENERAL Statutory treatment of ancestral estate and the half blood in intestate succession in the State of Washington.

Text: A brief overview of the law in this regard is helpful to an understanding of the issues before us. We start with the basic proposition that since the dominion of an owner over his or her property ends at the owner's death, the law must provide for the devolution of that property. If the owner has chosen to dispose of it by will, the property will pass according to the terms of the will. If there is no will, as here, the law alone, through the rules of descent and distribution, accomplishes the transfer and designates the persons who are to take. [1] It has been said that the passing of property upon intestacy is pursuant to a statutory will, which determines the property passing as well as the identity of the recipients, and which is considered to be such a distribution as the intestate presumably would have made had he made a will. (Footnotes omitted.) [2] Since succession to intestate property is at the will of (and subject to the sovereign political power of) the state, the state may regulate and control such succession as it deems necessary. Thus, the Legislature may change, condition, or abrogate the law of succession, subject only to certain constitutional limitations, none of which are pertinent to this case. [3] The statutes of descent and distribution in some states contain a modified form of the common law doctrine of ancestral property. These statutes recognize a difference between estates which were acquired by the intestate's own efforts and those derived from some ancestor, and provide to the effect that an estate of the latter kind shall go to those who are of the blood of the ancestor from whom the estate was derived. While these statutes vary in their phraseology and import, they all have as their basic theme the keeping of such property in the line of the blood from whence it came. [4] As one commentator on the subject has observed, [t]he conception that property should return to the side of the family from which it came is reasonable enough. On the other hand, complete abolition of the doctrine is not likely to meet with serious opposition and has the definite administrative advantage of eliminating from the intestate scheme a complex product of obscure antiquities. [5] And, as this same commentator further observed, [a] majority of the United States no longer recognize the doctrine of ancestral estate, but distribute realty and personalty without regard to the source of the intestate's title. Those states still retaining a semblance of the doctrine have modified the common law by statute. (Footnotes omitted.) [6] Legislative treatment of the ancestral and half-blood restrictions in this state has gone through four separate stages. Originally, our descent and distribution statute provided as follows: The degrees of kindred shall be computed according to the rules of the civil law, and the kindred of the half blood shall inherit equally with those of the whole blood, in the same degree. Laws of 1854, § 235, p. 307. This statute simply provided that relatives of the half blood would take equally with those of the whole blood in the same degree, and without regard to whether the property was ancestral property. The second version was adopted in 1945. It provided: The degree of kindred shall be computed according to the rules of the civil law, and the kindred of the half blood shall inherit equally with those of the whole blood in the same degree, unless the inheritance comes to the intestate by descent, devise, or gift from one of his ancestors, or kindred of such ancestor's blood, in which case all those who are not of the blood of such ancestors shall be excluded from such inheritance: .. . Laws of 1945, ch. 72, § 1, p. 216. This statute, as with most statutes of this type, merged a limited version of the doctrine of ancestral estate and inheritance by the half blood. As this court held in In re Estate of Kurtzman, 65 Wn.2d 260, 265, 396 P.2d 786 (1964), it was the Legislature's intent in adopting this statute, to circumscribe the inheritance rights of only kindred of the half blood, in certain circumstances, and not to modify the method of computing kinship. The third version was that adopted by the 1965 Legislature as part of a comprehensive reform of the probate laws recommended by the Board of Governors of the Washington State Bar Association. This version read: Kindred of the half blood shall inherit the same share which they would have inherited if they had been of the whole blood. Laws of 1965, ch. 145, § 11.04.035, p. 1436. This then returned to the original version. According to commentators Robert A. Stewart and John Richard Steincipher (the latter being one of the drafters of the probate reform legislation), the effect of this legislative change would be to declare  inter alia that kindred of the half blood inherit the same share which they would have inherited if they had been of the whole blood, [and] the `anachronistic doctrine' of ancestral property will have been repudiated. (Footnote omitted.) [7] The reason for this change was not that there might not be instances where bloodline integrity of property was desirable, but that the State Bar's Probate Committee believed such reasons to be outweighed by the resultant complications to the descent of property. [8] This third version, however, never became effective. The 1965 probate reform legislation was to have become effective on July 1, 1967. [9] The 1967 Legislature had second thoughts on the matter and amended this statute effective July 1, 1967. [10] The resultant enactment was a somewhat different version of the 1945 statute. This fourth and final version, the one before us herein, reads as follows: Kindred of the half blood shall inherit the same share which they would have inherited if they had been of the whole blood, unless the inheritance comes to the intestate by descent, devise, or gift from one of his ancestors, or kindred of such ancestor's blood, in which case all those who are not of the blood of such ancestors shall be excluded from such inheritance; ... Laws of 1967, ch. 168, § 3, p. 819. This fourth version (now codified as RCW 11.04.035) is much the same as the second version (the 1945 statute) but with one obvious difference: the words in the same degree were deleted from this latest version. It may be observed parenthetically that since the statute affects only relatives of the half blood, it follows that it only limits the inheritance rights of collateral heirs. [11] As Steincipher informs us, this 1967 enactment had not been recommended by the State Bar's Probate Committee, but was born of a legislative committee meeting in which the legislators' attention was directed to the `undesirable results' that would follow unless this language of [the former statute] were reenacted. [12] Thus, anachronistic doctrine or not, the Legislature knew what it wanted and enacted it, leaving the resultant complications to the courts to work out. As the foregoing chronology reflects, the State of Washington has followed the trend one commentator describes as follows: Modern statutes governing ancestral estate merge that doctrine and inheritance by the half blood. The modified expression of the doctrine now usually operates only to exclude kindred of the half blood. The treatment of the half blood in this country is very diverse. [13] As can be seen from the legislative history, so too has the treatment of the half blood in this state been very diverse. For the reasons discussed, statutes of this kind are not favored in American law. Nonetheless, as with any other statute, they must be construed to give effect to their legislative intent. [14] And this intention must be the intention expressed in the statute itself where the meaning of the statutory language is plain. [15] With full recognition then that we are not discussing the feudal or common law ancestral estate doctrine but a statutory version thereof, we will for convenience of nomenclature refer to our current statute as the ancestral estate statute and to the property covered thereby as ancestral property. Three basic issues are presented.