Florida Statute 732.103
“Share of other heirs”
What it means
This is Florida's ladder of heirs for whatever the surviving spouse doesn't take under §732.102 — or the whole estate when there is no spouse. It runs in strict order: descendants first, then parents, then siblings and their descendants, then a half-and-half split between the paternal and maternal grandparents and their descendants.
One rung most people miss: if no blood kindred qualify, the estate goes to the kindred of the decedent's last deceased spouse — only after that rung is empty does the state take by escheat.
- Order: descendants → parents → siblings and their descendants → grandparents' lines (split half paternal, half maternal).
- Descendants inherit per stirpes — a predeceased child's share passes down to that child's own children (§732.104).
- If one grandparent line has no surviving kindred, the other line takes all.
- Last rung before escheat: the kindred of the decedent's last deceased spouse, treated as if that spouse had survived and then died intestate.
- Subsection (6), a Holocaust-victim provision, applies only to escheated property and ceased to be effective for proceedings filed after December 31, 2004.
How it plays out
Most intestate estates never leave the first rung — descendants take. The ladder earns its keep in no-spouse, no-children files: a retiree survived by half-siblings, or by nieces on one side of the family only. We build the family tree before touching anything else, because each rung cuts off everyone below it — one surviving parent takes ahead of six siblings. Heir-search work lives here too: the further down the ladder, the more documentation the court wants.
Where this shows up
Pages on this site where § 732.103 does real work:
Questions people ask
