CONSTITUTIONAL LAW – STATUTORY INTERPRETATION – INHERITANCE, ETC. – “SLAYER STATUTE.” The Virginia Supreme Court engaged in some very interesting statutory interpretation recently, involving what you might call family break-up by homicide. As many lawyers know and surely many don’t, a Virginia statute, Code §55-402, provides that neither a slayer nor any person claiming through him shall in any way acquire any property or benefit as a result of the death of the decedent slain. Going back to basics, this provides a nice, comprehensive way of covering both heirs and legatees. The death of one Corrine Lockhart at the homicidal hand of her son in 2005 resulted in his murder conviction in 2009 and the daughters of the convicted murderer claimed that they could inherit their grandmother’s estate by intestate succession. There’s a 2008 revision of the slayer statute which they said would make it inapplicable to a conviction that did not follow until 2009. The revised statute says that an heir or distributee can independently establish his or her kinship to the decedent and thereby be deemed to be claiming directly from the decedent and not through a slayer parent or relative. Because of the 2005-2009 timing, the granddaughters argued that the 2008 version applied. In this case, Bell v. Casper, ___ Va. ___, ___ S.E.2d ___, 6 VLW 475 (9/16/11), the Virginia Supreme Court reasoned, though, that because the victim mother’s will identified her son as the sole beneficiary of her whole estate, identifying no further beneficiaries in the event he should predecease her, that will lapsed. (Yes, the Court was saying that the original slayer statute applied immediately upon the homicidal act and the death.) That of course means that the laws of intestate succession in effect at the time of her death in 2005 governed the distribution of her estate. That is in accordance with its legal historical context and the established Virginia policy that it is the law in existence on the date of death that governs an estate’s distribution. The lower court correctly concluded that the intestate succession law passes the estate to whatever heir or legatee could make a claim not through the slayer. The granddaughters’ next argument was that this violates our ancient ban on laws working “corruption of the blood” and “forfeiture of estate” as penalties (Code §55-4). The Supreme Court said that it simply does not, and that also applies to the 2005 murder, which is what triggered the slayer statute in this case. (The whole Slayer Statute is §§401—415 of Title 55.) The statute does not, as attainder and “blood corruption” did, deprive a slayer’s heirs of the right to inherit his property. The 2005 statute merely stopped them from acquiring other, additional property rights through him.
