Who inherits in Pennsylvania when there is no will

What happens when there is no will

Dying without a valid will is called dying intestate. The estate still goes through the Register of Wills in the county where the person lived. Someone still has to be appointed to run it, and that person receives letters of administration rather than letters testamentary. Until those letters are granted, nobody has the authority to sell or transfer estate property.

What changes is who inherits. Where there is a will, the will decides. Where there is not, 20 Pa.C.S. § 2102 and 20 Pa.C.S. § 2103 decide, and they do not read the way most families expect.

The surviving spouse does not take everything

A surviving spouse inherits the whole estate only where the person who died left no children, no grandchildren and no surviving parent. Under 20 Pa.C.S. § 2102 the spouse’s share depends entirely on who else survives, and assuming otherwise is the most common and most expensive misunderstanding in Pennsylvania estates.

• No surviving descendants and no surviving parent. The spouse takes the entire estate.
• No surviving descendants, but a surviving parent. The spouse takes the first $30,000 plus half of the balance. The rest goes to the parent.
• Surviving descendants, and every one of them is also a descendant of the spouse. The spouse takes the first $30,000 plus half of the balance.
• Surviving descendants, and any one of them is not a descendant of the spouse. The spouse takes one half. There is no $30,000.

The statute uses the word issue, which means descendants: children, then grandchildren, then on down. The fourth line is the one that catches people, because it does not require an estranged family or an unusual arrangement. One child from a first marriage is enough.

A worked example: the blended family

Take an estate worth $200,000 after debts are paid. There is a surviving spouse and there are two children.

If both children are also the children of the spouse, the third rule applies. The spouse takes the first $30,000, then half of the remaining $170,000, which is $85,000. The spouse receives $115,000 in total. The two children divide the other $85,000, so $42,500 each.

If one of the two children is from an earlier relationship, the fourth rule applies instead. The spouse takes one half and nothing more, so $100,000. The $30,000 disappears entirely. The two children divide the other $100,000, so $50,000 each.

One child moves $15,000 in this example, and on a larger estate it moves proportionally more. The statute does not ask how long the marriage lasted, whether the spouse raised that child, or whose earnings bought the house.

Who inherits after the spouse

Whatever the spouse does not take, and the whole estate where there is no spouse, passes down the order set out in 20 Pa.C.S. § 2103. Each class has to be exhausted before the next one receives anything.

1. Issue: children, and then their descendants.
2. Parents.
3. Issue of the parents: brothers and sisters, and then their descendants.
4. Grandparents.
5. Uncles and aunts, and their children and grandchildren.

The list stops there. Pennsylvania does not keep searching outward through ever more distant cousins looking for someone to inherit. Some states do, and the people found that way are sometimes called laughing heirs, because they never knew the person whose money they receive. Pennsylvania has decided not to have them.

What happens if there is genuinely nobody

Act 50 of 2025, signed 24 November 2025, changed the end of the line. An intestate estate with no heir under § 2103 now passes to an endowed community fund at the community foundation serving the municipality where the person lived. If there is no such foundation, it goes to the one serving the school district, and then to the one serving the county. Only after all of those does the estate escheat to the Commonwealth. That change took effect 23 January 2026.

In practice this means money from a genuinely heirless estate now stays in the community the person lived in. It also means that finding a real heir matters more than it used to, because there is now a named recipient waiting at the end of the queue.

The inheritance tax does not change

Nothing about intestacy affects what Pennsylvania charges. The inheritance tax is calculated on what each person receives, and the rate depends on their relationship to the person who died:

• A surviving spouse pays 0%.
• A parent inheriting from a child aged 21 or younger pays 0%, and a child aged 21 or younger inheriting from a parent pays 0%. The exemption runs in both directions.
• Direct descendants and lineal heirs pay 4.5%, which includes stepchildren.
• Siblings pay 12%.
• Everyone else pays 15%.

There is no exempt amount. The tax applies from the first dollar. Pay within three months of the date of death and you take a 5% discount, which the statute sets at 5% of the tax paid or the tax due, whichever is less. The tax is delinquent after nine months, and interest for 2026 runs at 7%. The return is form REV-1500, filed in duplicate with the county Register of Wills.

The intestate order and the tax classes are two different lists. A brother who inherits under § 2103 is still taxed at 12%, and a niece who inherits under § 2103 is still taxed at 15%.

When you need a lawyer instead of us

Pennsylvania does not require an attorney to administer an estate. Plenty of straightforward intestate estates are handled by a family member with the county office answering questions along the way, and that costs nothing beyond the filing fees.

Get a probate attorney if the family is blended, if anyone disagrees about who the heirs are, if a business or a farm is part of the estate, if there is real estate in more than one state, or if a will may exist somewhere and cannot be found. We are not a law firm, we do not give legal advice, and we do not take that work.