Section 461.059

Title XXXI TRUSTS AND ESTATES OF DECEDENTS AND PERSONS UNDER DISABILITY

Chapter 461

Effective - 28 Aug 1995   

  461.059.  Omitted spouse or child, probate rules do not apply — after-born child or after-adopted child, effect on nonprobate transfers. — 1.  No law intended to protect a spouse or child from unintentional disinheritance by the will of a testator shall apply to a nonprobate transfer.

  2.  A beneficiary designation designating the children of the owner or any other person as a class and not by name shall include all children of the person, whether born or adopted before or after the beneficiary designation is made.

  3.  If a beneficiary designation names an individual who is a child of the owner, and if the owner has a child born or adopted after the owner makes the beneficiary designation, the after-born or after-adopted child shall be entitled to receive a fractional share of any property otherwise transferable to any child of the owner who is named in the beneficiary designation, computed as follows:  the numerator of the fraction shall be one, and the denominator shall be the total number of the owner's children, whether born or adopted before or after the beneficiary designation was made and whether named or not in the beneficiary designation.  The property otherwise transferable to the owner's children named in the beneficiary designation shall be reduced in the proportion that their shares bear to each other.  If there is no share designated for any child of the owner an after-born or after-adopted child shall receive no share of the property subject to the nonprobate transfer.

  4.  A beneficiary designation, a governing instrument or the rules of any transferring entity may provide that the after-born child rule does not apply, in which case after-born and after-adopted children of the owner shall receive no share of property designated for named children of the owner.

  5.  A transferring entity shall have no obligation to apply subsection 3 of this section in making distribution with respect to property registered in beneficiary form.  This exception for the transferring entity shall not affect the ownership interest of the after-born or after-adopted child.

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(L. 1989 H.B. 145 § 36, A.L. 1995 S.B. 116)