Inheritance Law in Maryland, D.C., and Virginia: Who Inherits and What Gets Taxed

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If you die without a will in the DMV (the D.C., Maryland, and Virginia area), more than one statute may decide who gets what. Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Virginia each set their own order of inheritance, and each reaches real estate located inside its borders along with the personal property of people whose permanent home was there. Own a house in one jurisdiction while living in another and both sets of rules can apply to the same estate.

This guide covers what determines who inherits, which assets never reach probate, the intestate share in each of the three jurisdictions, and how inheritance and estate tax apply. A DMV estate planning attorney can tell you which of these default rules your current plan is quietly relying on.

What Decides Who Inherits When Someone Dies?

Two things decide it, asset by asset: how each asset is titled, and, for whatever is left, whether there is a valid will.

A will controls the property that passes through the estate. Without one, the intestacy statute of the relevant jurisdiction takes over and distributes that property down a fixed list. The list is built around family, and it does not reach friends or charities, though Maryland and D.C. both treat a registered domestic partner like a spouse for intestate succession. In Maryland that parity covers the intestate share and the inheritance-tax exemption, but a registered domestic partner does not get the surviving-spouse elective share.

Titling comes first, though. An asset with a survivor or a living named beneficiary attached to it generally passes outside the probate estate. That does not always put it beyond a surviving spouse’s claim, since each of these jurisdictions gives a spouse some statutory right against the estate, and Maryland and Virginia can reach certain assets that pass outside probate when they figure that share.

Which Assets Actually Pass Through Probate?

Fewer than most people expect. Property that generally passes outside probate includes:

• Property held jointly with a right of survivorship
• Life insurance proceeds payable to a named beneficiary
• Assets already titled in the name of a trust
• Retirement accounts and pensions with a living named beneficiary
• Bank and brokerage accounts with a payable-on-death or transfer-on-death designation

What generally remains is the probate estate: assets the decedent owned alone that do not pass by survivorship, beneficiary designation, or trust. Depending on how they are titled, that usually includes solely owned real estate, vehicles, business interests, personal belongings, and accounts with no beneficiary named. Passing outside probate is not the same as passing outside the tax calculation, so confirm both questions separately.

Who Inherits in Maryland When There Is No Will?

A surviving spouse or registered domestic partner takes the entire intestate estate, subject to only two exceptions.

If a minor child survives, the spouse’s share drops to one-half. If there is no surviving minor child but there is surviving issue who are not the issue of the spouse or registered domestic partner, the spouse takes the first $100,000 plus one-half of the residue.

Those are the only two conditions in the section. A surviving parent does not reduce the spouse’s share in Maryland, which is the point most people get wrong when they assume the statute splits the estate between a widow and the decedent’s mother.

Whatever the spouse does not take is divided equally among the surviving issue, by representation.

Who Inherits in Washington, D.C., When There Is No Will?

D.C. runs a graduated scale, and it treats a surviving domestic partner exactly as it treats a spouse.

The spouse or domestic partner takes the entire intestate estate only if no descendant and no parent of the decedent survives. If no descendant survives but a parent does, the share is three-fourths of the balance. That parent-triggered reduction is unique to D.C. among the three.

Where descendants survive, the share turns on whose descendants they are. It is two-thirds of the balance when all of the decedent’s surviving descendants are also the spouse’s and the spouse has no other descendants, and one-half when either the decedent has a descendant who is not the spouse’s or the spouse has a descendant who is not the decedent’s.

The surplus above the spouse’s share passes under the rest of the chapter, and where the decedent leaves children and no other descendants, those children divide it equally.

Who Inherits in Virginia When There Is No Will?

Virginia uses the simplest rule of the three, and the least generous to a surviving spouse in a blended family.

The surviving spouse takes the whole estate unless the decedent is survived by children or their descendants, one or more of whom are not also the spouse’s. In that case two-thirds passes to the decedent’s children and their descendants and one-third to the spouse. A single child from an earlier relationship is enough to trigger it, and the two-thirds is shared by all of the decedent’s children, not only the ones from that earlier relationship.

There is no middle tier. A surviving parent does not reduce the spouse’s share in Virginia, and the two descent and distribution sections contain no domestic-partner counterpart to Maryland’s or D.C.’s.

The same order governs personal property, which after funeral expenses, administration costs, and debts passes to the same people in the same proportions as real estate.

What Happens When There Is No Spouse and No Descendants?

All three jurisdictions climb the family tree, and they stop in different places.

Maryland goes to the surviving parents equally, then to a surviving parent, then to the issue of the parents by representation, then splits the estate between the two pairs of grandparents and their descendants. If no blood relative qualifies, Maryland then divides the estate among the decedent’s surviving stepchildren and the surviving issue of any stepchild who predeceased. Stepchildren are not shut out of a Maryland intestate estate the way they are often described.

Washington, D.C. climbs in the same way. With no spouse or domestic partner and no descendants, the estate goes to the decedent’s parents, or to whichever parent survives. If no parent survives, it passes to the decedent’s brothers and sisters and the descendants of any who died first, and then out to the nearest surviving relatives by degree. Only if no relative within the fifth degree survives does the estate escheat to the District of Columbia.

Virginia moves from children to parents, then to siblings and their descendants, then splits the estate between the two parental lines through grandparents, aunts and uncles, and great-grandparents, continuing without end. If neither parent has surviving kindred, Virginia looks to the family of the decedent’s most recent spouse, provided they were still married when that spouse died. Only after all of that does real estate escheat to the Commonwealth, with personal property accruing to it.

The practical point is the same everywhere. The statute, not you, picks who takes, and if no relative qualifies the estate goes to the state rather than to anyone you chose.

How Do Death Taxes Work Across the Three Jurisdictions?

Maryland runs two separate taxes. D.C. imposes an estate tax on a different model, and Virginia imposes neither an estate tax nor an inheritance tax.

Maryland’s inheritance tax applies to property passing to people outside a defined circle. Property passing to a spouse, a registered domestic partner, parent, grandparent, child, or lineal descendant of a child, to the spouse of a child or lineal descendant, to the surviving spouse of a deceased child or lineal descendant, so long as that spouse was married to them at the time of death and has not remarried, to a brother or sister, or to a corporation, partnership, or limited liability company owned entirely by those people is exempt from the inheritance tax.

“Child” includes a stepchild or former stepchild. When the tax does apply, it is a flat 10% of the clear value of what passes, and it tends to reach nieces, nephews, cousins, friends, and unregistered partners rather than immediate family. A registered domestic partner is exempt, and an unregistered partner can still be exempt on a primary residence the two owned together as joint tenants.

Maryland’s estate tax is separate, and the inheritance tax exemption does not waive it. The Maryland exclusion is five million dollars for a decedent dying on or after January 1, 2019, plus any unused exclusion from a predeceased spouse, with a 16% cap on the amount above it and a separate carve-out for qualified agricultural property.

D.C. taxes the estate of a resident dying after 2015 on a graduated scale, with nothing owed at or below the District’s annually adjusted zero-bracket amount and a top rate of 16% above it. For deaths in 2026 the zero-bracket amount is $4,988,400; confirm the figure for the year of death. Real and tangible property with a taxable situs outside the District reduces the tax proportionally.

Virginia is the simplest of the three. It has no estate tax and no inheritance tax. Virginia’s old estate tax was tied to a federal credit for state death taxes, and when Congress phased that credit out, Virginia let the tax lapse and repealed it for anyone dying on or after July 1, 2007. A large Virginia estate can still owe federal estate tax, but the Commonwealth itself takes nothing on what heirs inherit. Virginia does charge a small probate tax when a will is probated or an administration is granted for an estate worth more than $15,000, but that is a fee on the probate process, not a tax on the inheritance.

Can a Small Estate Skip Full Probate?

Often, yes. A Maryland estate qualifies for small estate administration when the property subject to administration in Maryland is worth $50,000 or less at the date of death.

There is a higher limit for spouses. When the surviving spouse is the sole heir or legatee, the estate can use small estate administration if the property subject to administration in Maryland is worth $100,000 or less, measured before the initial account is filed. Value here means fair market value less debts of record secured by the property.

Property distributed from an estate that qualifies as a Maryland small estate is also exempt from the inheritance tax, which is worth checking before assuming a tax is owed.

D.C. and Virginia have their own shortcuts. In D.C., an estate can be handled as a small estate when the property subject to administration is worth $80,000 or less. In Virginia, a personal probate estate of $75,000 or less can be collected by affidavit, and a single asset of $35,000 or less can be released without one. The dollar limits and the paperwork differ, so check the rule for the jurisdiction where the estate is being administered.