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KRS 391.010

Descent of real estate

Applied in 43 court decisions — leading case Cox v. Cooper (1974)

Most recently applied in Gregory v. Hardgrove (December 2018)

History: Amended 1974 Ky

How often courts cite this section

1943196019802000201840
citing decisions per year

Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.

When a person having right or title to any real estate or inheritance dies intestate as to such estate, it shall descend in common to his kindred, male and female, in the following order, except as otherwise provided in this chapter:

(1) To his children and their descendants; if there are none, then (2) To his father and mother, if both are living, one (1) moiety each; but if the father is dead, the mother, if living, shall take the whole estate; if the mother is dead, the whole estate shall pass to the father; if there is no father or mother, then (3) To his brothers and sisters and their descendants; if there are none, then (4) To the husband or wife of the intestate; if there are none surviving, then (5) One (1) moiety of the estate shall pass to the paternal and the other to the maternal kindred, in the following order:

(a) The grandfather and grandmother equally, if both are living; but if one is dead, the entire moiety shall go to the survivor; if there is no grandfather or grandmother, then (b) To the uncles and aunts and their descendants; if there are none, then (c) To the great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers, in the same manner prescribed for grandfather and grandmother by subsection (a); if there are none, then (d) To the brothers and sisters of the grandfathers and grandmothers and their descendants; and so on in other cases without end, passing to the nearest lineal ancestors and their descendants.

(6) If there is no such kindred to one of the parents as is described in subsection (5), the whole to go to the kindred of the other. If there is neither paternal nor maternal kindred, the whole shall go to the kindred of the husband or wife, as if he or she had survived the intestate and died entitled to the estate.

Official source: Kentucky General Assembly. Reproduced from public-domain Kentucky statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.