Crumpled Horned Plot Bunnies

A Harry Potter fanfic by Andrew Joshua Talon

DISCLAIMER: This is a non-profit fan based work of prose. Harry Potter is the property of J. K. Rowling and Warner Brothers, please support the official release.


AJTalon: This Chapter is Written by Disposable_Face, who is an actual lawyer.


How about a topic that no one asked about: Estate Planning?

For all the fics that deal with magical inheritances and lordship and all that jazz, how about something that maybe approximates a form of inheritance law?


Sirius's Heirs


*Post Battle of Hogwarts*

*Grimmauld Place*

*Draco shows up and is let into the sitting room of the house by Kreacher*

Draco: Ha, Potter, it took some private conversations with several misguided members of the Wizengamot, a few completely independent contributions to a few charitable institutions, but they accepted my challenge to Sirius Black's will and chose to invalidate it. It was expensive, but nothing compared to the Black estates. Without his will giving everything to you, I'm his heir by blood, and I'll be expecting you to return all the property that should have gone to me, including this house and any money of his you've illegally spent.

Harry: Wow. Did you talk to an attorney, or did you do this on your own? Because you're wrong on multiple levels there.

Draco: What? No, I'm not. The will's been invalidated, that means I inherit everything.

Harry: Sure, I'll take your word for it that the will was invalidated, but that doesn't make you Sirius' heir and it wouldn't mean you get this house, or any of the other properties, or the bank accounts, or the furnishings and effects, even if you were his heir.

Draco: Now you're just talking nonsense.

Harry: I'm really not. If the will is invalid, since Sirius didn't have any prior will that might be revived, he's intestate. Under normal rules of intestacy, in order of potential succession: Sirius was unmarried, he had no descendants, his parents died before him, his only sibling, Regulus, died before him, his grandparents died before him, and all his aunts and uncles died before him, which means that his intestate probate estate would fall in equal shares to his cousins, Narcissa, Bellatrix, and Andromeda. But Bellatrix couldn't inherit as Sirius' killer under the slayer rule, which leaves Andromeda and your lovely mother as his heirs.

Draco: That's impossible!

Harry: It's how intestacy works. You're not Sirius's heir: your mother and aunt are. First, the spouse takes, then descendants, then back up one generation, then descendants, then back up one generation, until you find someone still alive more than five days after the death of the person whose estate you're divvying up.

Draco: But they're both… And Andromeda was cast out of the family, she can't inherit.

Harry: I'm going to tell your mother about that implicit assumption that women can't own or inherit property. Inheritances to a married individual aren't even community property unless the heir or beneficiary willingly comingles them with marital property.

Draco: Please don't tell her.

Harry: Anyway, Andromeda was cast out of her mother's will, and blasted off the tapestry. Negative wills are allowed, so it's possible to prevent someone specific from inheriting property, even under partial intestacy, but you can't place those restrictions on someone else's will. Not unilaterally, anyway. You can make it a provision in a contract, but there are extra formality requirements for that. Since Sirius didn't leave any will that specifically excluded Andromeda from inheriting under intestacy, and you got his only will invalidated which means he couldn't have left a negative will provision excluding her, she's entitled to her valid share.

Draco, rubbing his temples: Fine, at least half of the Black estate will go to my mother, if not to me. That's still better than you having all of it. We'll need to set up a proper accounting of the estate, appraisal of various heirlooms and pieces of chattel, and then negotiate a split with Andromeda.

Harry: Not so fast, Draco, I said you were wrong on multiple levels. It's not enough that Narcissa is one of Sirius' heirs.

Draco: If mother is one of his heirs, she's entitled to half of the estate. I wasn't going to let you cheat me out of what's rightfully mine, I'm certainly not going to let you cheat my mother out of what is rightfully hers.

Harry: She's not entitled to half of the estate, she's entitled to half of all probate assets.

Draco: Oh, Merlin, what now?

Harry: Sirius knew he could die at nearly any moment since before we both were born. He was careful about his property, especially after he was informally excommunicated from the family. And after he escaped, he made sure to review and republish his various provisions and will.

Draco: But he was a convict, how would he even-

Harry: Convicts still have property rights. The government doesn't get to just seize everything you own when you're arrested, something you should know, given your father spent some time in Azkaban while you were busy trying to murder the Headmaster.

Draco: But surely once he was a fugitive from justice, Sirius couldn't simply walk into Gringotts or a law office and sign legal paperwork.

Harry, shrugging: No, but the ministry never bothered to freeze his accounts, even after he escaped Azkaban. They didn't even ask the goblins to keep an eye on his finances. So he was able to access his accounts and file various documents via Owl post. Hell, he even bought me a firebolt during out third year.

Draco, grumbling about incompetent minions: Wait, is that where you got that broom? Not important, I can be angry about you buying your way to quiddich victory later. How, exactly, does that prevent my mother from claiming her inheritance?

Harry: Well, the life insurance policy wasn't a probatable asset, it just pays out to the beneficiary regardless of what the will says or doesn't say.

Draco: And I assume you're the beneficiary?

Harry: Yes, though Professor Lupin and Andromeda were both secondary beneficiaries.

Draco: And the bank account?

Harry: A Payable-On-Death provision: the moment he died, the account was decanted into my bank account and no longer part of the probate assets.

Draco: And the real property? Those don't have beneficiaries.

Harry: No, but he had the deeds and sole legal title, so he converted from a Fee Simple title into a Joint Ownership with Right of Survivorship, with me as the only other title holder. So, once he died, full ownership of this house and the various other properties were also mine.

Draco, massaging his temples again: So that just leaves his effects: the furniture, his personal possessions, the library, the associated heirlooms.

Harry: Oh, Sirius technically didn't own those when he died.

Draco: WHAT?!

Harry: Technically, they were owned by a revocable living trust. Sirius established the trust with himself as settlor, himself as the only trustee, and himself as the only beneficiary, with myself as the primary remainderman, and-

Draco: Andromeda and Lupin as secondary remaindermen, I assume.

Harry: Also, Hermione and Ron. But functionally, Sirius held title over his own property while he was alive, and could use it as he saw fit. Meanwhile, I had the remainder, and so everything that wasn't already accounted for passed to me through that trust. There might be some problems if Sirius gains property post-mortem, but it's not like he was a famous singer, no matter what Luna thinks about the Hobgoblins.

Draco: A life estate with the possibility of reversion? What was he, a goblin?

Harry: Not really, but similar. Also, you don't know the intestate line of succession, but you know what a life estate with a remainder is?

Draco, shrugging: Father wanted to make sure I knew what language in a purchase agreement with the goblins meant that they wouldn't be able to claw back a goblin-forged item after his death.

Harry: Wait, you mean Wizards purchase items from the goblins knowing that the goblins expect a reversion on the purchaser's death, but go out of their way to make sure that the goblins don't have a legal process by which to reclaim their property?

Draco: Focus, Potter, they're only goblins. What does my mother get?

Harry, grumbling about how he'll help Hermione deal with it later: Haven't I made it clear already, Draco? As an intestate heir, your lovely mother was entitled to half of all probate assets, but Sirius went out of his way to make sure he didn't have any probate assets. There's no legal basis for you to challenge the inheritance because Narcissa is already inheriting everything she's entitled to.

Draco, furious: You won't get away with this, Potter.

Harry: It's already done. But if Narcissa would like, I'm happy to have her over for a nice, quiet dinner to… discuss things. Now, if there's nothing else, I'm sure you have a lot of dirty backroom dealing to get to, and I have literally a thousand things I'd rather be doing that continue to educate you on things you should either already know or have someone to explain to you.


AN: First, don't take this as legal advice. But you'd be surprised how little a will that "leaves everything to x" will leave to x in the right circumstances. Estate planning is complicated.

Second, I'm not going to go look up the state of probate law in England in 1997 to see how well it matches up with the UPC, but I'm assuming that intestate inheritance in Britain 25 years ago was fairly similar to intestate inheritance law in most jurisdictions in the USA today, at least in the broad strokes, if only because of the shared history with the common law.

Third, I'm not going to go look up trust law in England in 1997, either.

Fourth, Draco still actually has grounds to challenge under the facts I've described, but basically, the only options he has would be to either demonstrate that Sirius lacked capacity to enter into contracts when he retitled property, altered deeds, amended his bank account POD provision, and amended his life insurance policy or could prove that the owl mail sent to do that work was fraudulent. I'm assuming that magic has ways of preventing fraud in these cases, but the capacity argument would probably have a strong starting point in the fact that Sirius spent a decade in Azkaban, though the fact that Sirius escaped on his own and was able to manage various financial decisions on his own, while on the run, with varying levels of formal requirements, would be strong points on Harry's side here.

Fifth, that whole thing about goblins believing that the true owner of a thing is the person who made it? And that sales mean a transfer of property to the purchaser and a return to the maker (or their heir/beneficiary) after the death of the purchaser? Life estates and reversions are actually a pretty normal thing in property law and wizards are going out of their way to be assholes to goblins by making a stink about something that is an ordinary practice in human society.

Sixth, that thing about property attained post-mortem and famous singers? That's a reference to an actual US inheritance case, about whether Marilyn Monroe's will could devise property that she didn't own at the time of her death, but that was gained by her estate after she died.