It is a question most families never imagine asking, until a tragedy forces it: if one family member wrongfully causes another's death, can they still inherit from the person they killed? Colorado's answer is a firm no. Under what lawyers call the slayer rule, a person who feloniously and intentionally kills another forfeits the inheritance, insurance proceeds, and other benefits they would have received from their victim's death.
The rule sounds like it should rarely matter — and thankfully, it rarely does. But when it does, the stakes and emotions are enormous, and the legal questions are more intricate than the moral principle suggests. What counts as a disqualifying killing? What happens to the forfeited share? Does the rule apply without a criminal conviction? These questions land on grieving families at the worst possible moment.
Whiteford's Colorado team handles the estate side of these tragedies with the care they demand. This page explains the rule's logic, its surprisingly broad reach, and how it actually gets applied in probate proceedings.
The principle: forfeiture, not punishment
The slayer rule isn't a criminal penalty — the criminal courts handle punishment. It's a rule of property and inheritance law, built on the equitable maxim that no one should be permitted to profit from their own wrong. When the rule applies, the law generally treats the killer as if they had died before their victim: their inheritance rights, beneficiary designations, and survivorship interests are unwound, and the victim's estate flows to the people who would have taken had the killer never stood in line.
That 'treated as predeceased' mechanism matters, because it answers the practical question of where the forfeited share goes — typically to alternate beneficiaries or other heirs, not to the state and not to the killer's own chosen successors as a workaround. Colorado's version of the rule is generally triggered by a felonious and intentional killing; accidents and genuinely non-culpable causes of death do not strip an heir of an inheritance.
How far the rule reaches
People tend to assume the slayer rule is about wills — a murderer can't take under the victim's will. True, but that's the narrowest slice of it. Death moves property through many channels, and a forfeiture rule that covered only wills would be trivially easy to circumvent. Colorado's rule is therefore built to follow the money across essentially every way a death transfers value.
In broad terms, the disqualification reaches the full landscape of death-time transfers, including these.
- Gifts under the victim's will, and shares that would pass by intestacy when there is no will
- Life insurance proceeds and other beneficiary-designated assets naming the killer
- Survivorship rights in joint tenancy property, which are severed rather than allowed to enrich the killer
- Interests flowing through trusts, retirement accounts, and similar nonprobate arrangements
- Fiduciary roles — a killer generally cannot serve as personal representative or trustee for the victim's estate
Convictions, civil findings, and the hard gray areas
The rule's most misunderstood feature is its relationship to criminal court. A final criminal conviction for the qualifying killing generally settles the matter for inheritance purposes. But the absence of a conviction does not mean the inheritance proceeds untouched — the probate court can make its own determination that the killing was felonious and intentional, using the civil standard of proof, which is less demanding than the criminal one. An heir who was acquitted, never charged, or died before trial can still be found disqualified in the estate proceeding.
The genuinely hard cases live in the gray zones: deaths involving self-defense claims, serious mental illness, assisted dying, or reckless conduct short of intent — and families divided over whether to raise the issue at all. These proceedings are painful, and they benefit from counsel who can be both rigorous and humane. Whiteford's Colorado team, part of a Chambers-ranked national trusts and estates platform with ACTEC fellows in the section, approaches them that way. And for anyone whose real concern is broader — making sure an estate plan handles even unthinkable contingencies cleanly — the free Colorado Estate Snapshot at /estate-snapshot and a free Legacy Game Plan Session are quiet places to start.
