Succession Act 1965 section 4A

Succession rights

Section 4A establishes that family relationships for succession purposes are determined regardless of whether a person's parents were married to each other, and sets out special rules for donor-conceived children and for intestacy where parents were unmarried.

• For the purposes of the Succession Act, family relationships are determined irrespective of whether a person's parents were married to each other, meaning that children born outside marriage have the same succession rights as those born within marriage.
• For donor-conceived children, parentage is determined under the Children and Family Relationships Act 2015, which identifies the legal parents for succession purposes regardless of biological connection through donation.
• Where a person whose parents were not married to each other dies without a will, there is a rebuttable presumption that the deceased was not survived by their father or by any relative connected through their father — though this presumption can be overturned if evidence to the contrary is produced. This presumption does not apply where the father's legal parentage was established under the donor-conception provisions of the 2015 Act.
• These rules do not disturb the property rights of adopted persons under the Adoption Act 2010, and they do not apply retrospectively to the estate of anyone who died before Part V of the Status of Children Act 1987 came into force.