Madison Arcemont: Computational Intestate Succession

As new technologies develop, we continue our search for ways that this technology can improve our world, and particularly our legal system. One rarely thought of system with room for improvement is that of intestate succession, the court's management of the estates of individuals who die without a will. Computational law, the implementation of the law through computer code, is emerging as a field that can solve a wide range of issues in the law, including in the estate planning field. In particular, smart contracts, programs that carry out agreements procedurally, can be used to make the process of intestate succession more efficient, affordable, and accessible for the heirs of an individual who dies without a will. This paper investigates the necessity, feasibility, and challenges associated with implementing computational intestate succession and argues that states should implement such technology. While the field of estate planning has been slow to accept technological solutions, the trend towards acceptance shows that computational solutions to long-standing problems may be accepted in the near future. To demonstrate the feasibility of computational intestate succession, this article concludes with a sample program for the smart contract written in Lexon, a natural language program.