How the Five-Day Rule Works Across All Estate Documents
This statute extends the 120-hour survival requirement beyond intestate succession to cover virtually every type of estate planning document. Whether someone is named in a will, a trust, a beneficiary designation, or a payable-on-death account, they must survive by at least five days to inherit.
For the purposes of this article, except as provided in subsection D of this section, a person who is not established by clear and convincing evidence to have survived an event, including the death of another person, by one hundred twenty hours is deemed to have predeceased the event.
A.R.S. § 14-2702(A)The rule also addresses co-owned property with right of survivorship. If two co-owners die close together and it cannot be proven that one survived the other by 120 hours, the property is split in half. One half passes as if the first co-owner survived, and the other half passes as if the second survived. This prevents the entire property from passing through a single chain of estates.
When the Rule Does Not Apply
Arizona carves out several exceptions. The 120-hour requirement does not apply when the governing instrument specifically addresses simultaneous deaths or common disasters. It also does not apply if the document expressly waives the survival requirement or sets a different survival period.
Additional exceptions protect against technical failures. If applying the rule would invalidate a property interest under the Rule Against Perpetuities, or if applying it to multiple governing instruments would cause an unintended duplication or failure of a gift, the 120-hour requirement is set aside.
For families and individuals creating estate plans, this statute highlights the value of including explicit survival clauses. While the 120-hour default is reasonable for most situations, some plans benefit from a longer period, and others may work better without a survival requirement at all.
