The call usually comes from an adult child: Dad died last month, there is no will, and a stepmother, two siblings, and a half-brother in another state are all quietly wondering who gets the house. Nobody is fighting — yet.
Colorado's probate code supplies a default estate plan for everyone who never wrote their own. It is called intestate succession, and it distributes property by a fixed family-tree formula — orderly, impartial, and often surprising.
This page covers how the defaults work, where blended families get surprised, and what comes next. Whiteford's Colorado team guides heirs through intestate estates statewide.
What Colorado's default plan actually says
Many people assume a surviving spouse simply inherits everything. Under Colorado's defaults, that is true only in certain configurations — generally when every child of the decedent is also a child of the surviving spouse. When either spouse has children from another relationship, or the decedent's parents survive, the spouse's share changes. The family tree, not the family's wishes, controls the math.
With no surviving spouse, the estate passes to children equally, a deceased child's share flowing to that child's own children. From there the law works outward: parents, siblings, then more distant relatives. Identifying the correct heirs is a formal task completed before anything is distributed.
Blended families: where the defaults surprise people most
Colorado families rarely match the tidy diagram the intestacy rules assume. Second marriages, stepchildren raised from toddlerhood, unmarried partnerships, and half-siblings across households are common — and the defaults handle each in unexpected ways.
The surprises cut both ways: people the decedent loved most can receive nothing, while relatives who drifted away decades ago inherit anyway. A few patterns recur constantly.
- Stepchildren generally inherit nothing under the defaults unless legally adopted, no matter how close the bond
- Unmarried partners receive nothing through intestacy, however long the couple shared a life
- A surviving spouse frequently shares the estate with the decedent's children from a prior relationship
- Estranged children and distant half-relatives can inherit alongside those who provided daily care
- Assets with beneficiary designations or joint titling pass outside these rules entirely
What happens next — and how families can steer it
Someone must open a probate case before anything official occurs. The court appoints a personal representative from a statutory priority list — typically the spouse or an heir — who gathers assets, addresses debts and taxes, and distributes under the default formula, through the Denver Probate Court or the county's district court.
Families are not entirely locked in: adult heirs can sometimes agree in writing to a different division, and anyone can formally disclaim a share. The deeper lesson is that intestacy is optional — a will or trust replaces it completely. The free Colorado Estate Snapshot at /estate-snapshot shows how your own assets would flow today, and a free Legacy Game Plan Session turns that picture into a plan.
