Wills, Trusts and Estates: Trusts: Administration: Simultaneous death + Power of appointment + The slayer rule

Simultaneous death is a problem of inheritance which occurs when two people (sometimes referred to as commorientes) die at, or very near, the same time, and at least one of them is entitled to part or all of the other's estate on their death. This is usually the result of an un-natural death occurring from events such as an accident, a homicide, or a murder-suicide.

Under the common law, if there was any evidence whatsoever that one party had survived the other, even by a few moments, then the estates would be distributed in that order. However, the decedents could write (or have written) a clause in the will that requires their property to be distributed as though each had predeceased the other.

Some wills now include Titanic clauses (named for the RMS Titanic, which caused many simultaneous deaths among testators and executors). These clauses lay out explicit instructions for dealing with simultaneous death.

A power of appointment is a term most frequently used in the law of wills to describe the ability of the testator (the person writing the will) to select a person who will be given the authority to dispose of certain property under the will. Although any person can exercise this power at any time during their life, its use is rare outside of a will. The power is divided into two broad categories: general powers of appointment and special powers of appointment. The holder of a power of appointment differs from the trustee of a trust in that the former has no obligation to manage the property for the generation of income, but need only distribute it.

The slayer rule, in the common law of inheritance, stops a person inheriting property from a person they murder (for example, a murderer does not inherit from parents or a spouse they killed). In figuring inheritance of the decedent's estate, the slayer is treated as though they had died before the person they murdered, hence the murderer's share of the estate would pass to their issue.

While a criminal conviction requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt, the slayer rule applies to civil law, not criminal law, so the prosecutor must only prove the murder by a preponderance of the evidence, as in a wrongful death claim meaning on the civil standard of proof of the balance of probability. Hence, even a slayer who is acquitted of the crime of murder can lose the inheritance by the civil court running the estate.