Definition
Intestate is both an adjective and a noun in legal usage.
As an adjective, it describes the condition of a person who dies without leaving a valid will, or the property and estate that passes under such circumstances. A person dies intestate when no will exists, when every will left has been rejected as invalid, or — critically — when a will exists but fails to dispose of all property, leaving a portion of the estate undistributed.
As a noun, it refers to the person who has died in that condition: the deceased without a valid will. Courts and practitioners routinely speak of "the intestate's estate" or "the intestate's heirs" as a shorthand.
When a person dies intestate, their property does not pass according to their own expressed wishes but instead descends to heirs according to the jurisdiction's statute of descent and distribution — the rules governing intestate succession.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Without a valid will indicating whom to leave one's estate to after death; not devised or bequeathed; not disposed of by will.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Without having made a valid will; without a will; as, to die intestate. Not devised or bequeathed; not disposed of by will; as, an intestate estate.
The common-language definitions are unusually close to the legal ones here, reflecting centuries of the Latin term passing directly into ordinary English through legal practice. The meaningful gap lies in one point the common definitions omit: a person can die partially intestate — leaving a will that covers only some property — while remaining testate as to the rest. Common usage implies an all-or-nothing condition; the legal concept does not.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
TOTAL INTESTACY: No valid will exists at all. The entire estate passes by operation of the intestate succession statute.
PARTIAL INTESTACY: A will exists and is valid but fails to dispose of all property — typically because a residuary clause is absent, a beneficiary has predeceased the testator without a substitute provision, or a bequest lapses. The undistributed portion passes as if no will had been made for that share. Rapalje & Lawrence is the most precise of the historical sources on this point, noting that a person "dies intestate, wholly or partially" depending on how much of the estate the will actually covers.
QUASI-INTESTACY: A historical term noted in Burrill, describing the situation where a testator makes a will and appoints executors, but those executors refuse to act. The estate was said to devolve "quasi intestate." This is a largely obsolete framing but appears in older reported cases and treatises.
Why It Matters in Research
The most important navigational point for corpus research is the partial intestacy problem. Historical sources vary in how explicitly they acknowledge it. Black's (both editions) defines intestate primarily around the total case — dying "without making a will" — and treats the noun usage as a secondary observation. Rapalje & Lawrence is the exception, making partial intestacy central to the definition. When reading older cases or opinions that invoke intestate succession, researchers should determine whether the court is addressing total or partial intestacy, as the applicable rules and the procedural posture may differ.
The term also carries a different doctrinal weight across time periods. Bouvier's notes that dying intestate was once treated in parts of France as tantamount to dying "without confession" — a moral failure as much as a legal condition. While this theological dimension does not survive in American law, it explains why early American intestacy statutes were sometimes framed paternalistically, and why probate courts historically exercised relatively broad discretion in supervising intestate estates.
Researchers working with pre-20th-century sources should also be alert to the distinction between descent (real property passing to heirs) and distribution (personal property passing to next of kin). Many historical sources treat these as separate tracks governed by different rules. Modern intestacy statutes and the Uniform Probate Code have largely unified the treatment, but historical case law frequently turns on which track applies. The encyclopedia entries on surviving-spouse shares and collateral relatives address how these modern unified schemes work and where state variation persists.
The advancements doctrine — the treatment of lifetime gifts as partial satisfaction of an intestate share — is a further trap in historical research. Whether a gift counts as an advancement against the heir's share requires close attention to the jurisdiction and period. The relevant encyclopedia entry addresses this directly.
Historical Dictionary Support
All six shelf sources agree on the core: intestate means dying without a valid will, and the word also identifies the deceased person in that condition. The sources diverge modestly in precision and emphasis.
Black's (both editions) leads with the adverbial use — dying "without making a will" or "without leaving anything to testify what his wishes were" — and adds the noun usage as a practical note rather than a formal sub-definition. The formulation about leaving "anything to testify" his wishes is evocative but imprecise by modern standards; it would seem to exclude informal writings that might constitute a holographic will in many jurisdictions.
Anderson's is the most structurally complete, explicitly labeling the adjective and noun senses, listing "intestate estate, property, laws" as adjectival compounds, and noting the antonym testator in each sub-entry. This makes it the most useful of the historical sources for researchers who need definitional clarity across the corpus.
Rapalje & Lawrence stands apart for its treatment of partial intestacy as an equally valid and "strict" application of the term — not a peripheral edge case but a recognized and important meaning. Researchers encountering partial intestacy issues in older materials should weight this source accordingly.
Bouvier's adds historical and comparative context, noting the French conflation of intestacy with moral failing and the Latin root intestatus, while defining the condition as dying "having made no will, or one which is defective in form." The phrase "defective in form" is notable: it sweeps in wills that were executed but failed formal validity requirements, a distinction that matters when tracing the history of will formalities.
Burrill cites Blackstone and Kent directly and adds the quasi-intestate formulation regarding executor refusal. Burrill also cross-references the Latin intestato, useful for researchers working with civil-law influenced sources or Louisiana materials.
Jurisdictional Note
Intestate succession rules are entirely statutory and vary significantly by state. The Uniform Probate Code has been adopted in whole or in part by a majority of states but is not universal, and surviving-spouse shares, the treatment of half-bloods, and the rights of non-marital children differ across jurisdictions. Louisiana's intestacy law derives from the civil law tradition and diverges substantially from common-law American schemes. Federal law does not govern intestate succession, though federal estate tax rules interact with state intestacy outcomes.