People often think that when a person passes away without a will
and immediate family, their property will go to the government.
This is not entirely correct. It can be the case that the property
of a person who passes away intestate and without next of kin can
be held by the government, but this is rare and only occurs in
specific circumstances.
If you die without a will, i.e. if you die intestate, the
Estate Administration Act sets out a table of
consanguinity (shared blood) that legally defines the closeness of
your relatives and how your property will be distributed amongst
them on your intestacy. A new law, called the Wills and Estate
Succession Act, will change the table of consanguinity into a
parantelic table, which means that the manner in which the
closeness of relatives is calculated will be somewhat different
once that law comes into force.
