What Happens If You Die Without a Will in Colorado? A Durango Estate-Planning Guide

Die without a will in Colorado, and the state writes one for you. Not a lawyer. Not your family. The Colorado legislature decided, in advance, who gets what share of your house on Camino del Rio or your grandfather's ranch outside Hesperus. That's what “intestate succession” means, and it kicks in the moment you die without a signed, valid will — no exceptions for good intentions or a promise made at the kitchen table.

We field this question every few months at the firm — usually from an adult child whose parent passed suddenly, or a surviving spouse who assumed everything would simply come to them. Sometimes it does. Often it doesn't, not entirely. Colorado's intestate succession statute splits an estate by fixed formula (C.R.S. §§ 15-11-101 to 15-11-103), and that formula surprises people constantly — blended families most of all.

What Does “Intestate Succession” Actually Cover?

Intestate succession only covers assets that would have passed through probate anyway — not everything you own. A surprising amount of what people own never gets there in the first place, because it's already governed by a beneficiary form or a title document instead of a will.

• • Life insurance with a named beneficiary
• • Retirement accounts — 401(k), IRA — with a named beneficiary
• • Property already held in a living trust
• • Bank or brokerage accounts titled payable-on-death or transfer-on-death
• • Real estate with a Colorado transfer-on-death deed
• • Anything owned in joint tenancy with right of survivorship

Those pass automatically to whoever's named on the form, regardless of what the intestate statute says. What's left — the house titled solely in your name, the truck, the checking account with no beneficiary designation on file — is what falls under Colorado's intestate rules. (C.R.S. § 15-11-101.)

What Does a Surviving Spouse Inherit in Colorado?

A surviving spouse does not automatically inherit everything under Colorado's intestate statute — that assumption trips up more Durango families than any other part of this law. What your spouse actually receives depends on whether you have living parents or children, and whether those children are also your spouse's children.

• • No surviving descendants or parents, or all descendants are shared with your spouse and your spouse has no other children: your spouse inherits the entire estate.
• • Spouse and your parents survive, no descendants: your spouse gets the first $431,000 plus three-quarters of the balance; your parents split what remains.
• • Spouse and shared descendants survive, but your spouse also has children from another relationship: your spouse gets the first $323,000 plus half the balance; the rest goes to your descendants.
• • Spouse survives alongside your descendants who are not your spouse's children — say, kids from a prior marriage: your spouse gets the first $215,000 plus half the balance; the rest goes to those descendants.

(Colo. Rev. Stat. §§ 15-11-102, 15-10-112.)

Here's how that plays out. Say a Durango contractor dies in 2026 without a will, survived by his wife and one son from a marriage before hers. He owned the family home jointly with his wife — that passes to her outright, outside probate entirely. But he also had a $500,000 investment account titled solely in his own name. Because his one surviving child isn't his wife's child too, that account is intestate property under the third scenario above: his wife receives the first $221,000 (the 2026 indexed amount), plus half of the remaining $279,000 — about $360,500 total — and his son inherits the other $139,500. Neither of them chose that split. The statute did.

Who Inherits If There's No Surviving Spouse?

With no surviving spouse, the estate passes to your descendants first — children, or, if a child predeceased you, their children in turn — split per capita at each generation under C.R.S. § 15-11-103. Picture a rancher outside Bayfield with two adult children. If one of them died young leaving three kids of her own, that predeceased child's one-half share splits three ways among the grandchildren — not evenly across all five living descendants at once.

No descendants at all? It moves to your surviving parents. No parents? To your siblings. Colorado's statute keeps working outward through the family tree — nieces, nephews, grandparents, cousins — well before it considers anything else.

Does Colorado Keep Your Property If You Have No Heirs?

Almost never. “Escheat” — the state taking an estate because no eligible heir exists — is the true last resort, and the statute is built specifically to avoid it, reaching as far as cousins before giving up. In twenty-plus years handling Durango and Four Corners estates, an actual escheat case is rare enough that most La Plata County probate attorneys could count the ones they've seen on one hand.

Which Intestate Succession Rules Catch Families Off Guard?

• • 120-hour survivorship rule: an heir must outlive you by at least 120 hours (five days) to inherit. Die together in the same accident, and neither estate benefits from the other. (C.R.S. § 15-11-104.)
• • Half-relatives count as whole relatives: a half-sibling inherits exactly the share a full sibling would. (C.R.S. § 15-11-107.)
• • Posthumous children inherit too: a child conceived before your death but born after it receives a full share under Colorado's parentage rules. (C.R.S. § 15-11-104.)
• • Designated beneficiary agreements: unmarried Colorado couples can file a formal agreement granting each other intestate-style inheritance rights — a tool most people have never heard of, and it must be signed before death. (C.R.S. §§ 15-11-102.5, 15-22-103.)

Do You Still Have to Go Through Probate Without a Will?

Yes — no will does not mean no probate. Someone still has to petition the La Plata County District Court, be appointed personal representative, and administer the estate under Colorado's probate code; it simply happens under the intestate statute's default distribution instead of your own instructions. Our companion guide walks through exactly how a Colorado probate case moves from petition to closing, including realistic timelines. That personal representative has real work ahead: inventorying assets, publishing notice to creditors, paying valid debts and taxes, and only then distributing what's left according to the intestate shares above. Without a will naming someone for the job, Colorado law sets an order of priority — usually the surviving spouse first, then other heirs — for who has the right to serve.

Smaller estates may qualify for a simplified collection-by-affidavit process rather than full probate, once ten days have passed since death and the estate's value stays under a statutory threshold tied to the exempt-property amount in C.R.S. § 15-11-403 (itself indexed annually). See C.R.S. § 15-12-1201 for the affidavit procedure itself. Most estates, though, still need a formally opened probate case.

How Do You Avoid Colorado's Intestate Succession Rules?

You avoid them with a signed, valid Colorado will — a basic one takes one meeting to get started. What it buys you: you choose who gets what, you choose who raises your minor children, and your family skips the statutory formula entirely — no per-capita math, no guessing which subsection applies to a blended household. Deciding between a simple will and a living trust is usually the first fork in that conversation. If a family member's incapacity or long-term care is part of the picture, that belongs alongside your estate plan, not after it — see our guide to Medicaid planning and asset protection in Colorado.