Natural Parents and Marital Status
Whether a child's parents were married at the time of birth does not change the child's inheritance rights. Arizona treats every person as the child of their natural parents for purposes of intestate succession, regardless of marital status.
For the purposes of intestate succession, a person is the child of that person's natural parents, regardless of their marital status. If this issue is in dispute the court shall establish that relationship under title 25, chapter 6, article 1.
A.R.S. § 14-2114(A)When parentage is disputed, Arizona courts resolve it using the procedures outlined in Title 25, which covers family law and parentage determinations.
How Adoption Changes the Picture
Adoption creates a clean legal boundary. Once a child is adopted, they are treated as the child of their adoptive parents for inheritance purposes. The legal connection to the natural parents is severed.
There is one important exception. When a stepparent adopts a child, the relationship between the child and the non-adopting natural parent is not affected. The child can still inherit from or through that natural parent. This protects children in blended families from losing inheritance rights on one side of the family because of a stepparent adoption on the other.
Adoption of a child by the spouse of either natural parent has no effect on the relationship between the child and that natural parent or on the right of the child or a descendant of the child to inherit from or through the other natural parent.
A.R.S. § 14-2114(B)When a Natural Parent Cannot Inherit
Arizona also places a condition on natural parents who want to inherit from their child. A natural parent can only inherit if they openly treated the child as their own and did not refuse to support them. This prevents a parent who abandoned or neglected a child from benefiting from the child's estate.
