When a Child Kills a Parent: Arizona’s Slayer Statute and the Mercy-Killing Gap

By Kent Berk on May 28th, 2026 in BLOG, Elder Law, Estate Litigation, Probate, PROBATE LITIGATION, testament capacity, Vulnerable Adults, WILL CONTESTS

Earlier this month, Catalan, Spain police arrested Jonathan Andic, heir to the multi-billion-dollar Mango fashion empire, in connection with the December 2024 death of his father, founder Isak Andic.  Isak fell almost 500 feet into a ravine while the two were hiking outside Barcelona.  The death was initially ruled accidental, and the file was reopened only after forensic review of phone and photo data contradicted the son’s account.

Spain will sort out the criminal case and the estate. But the underlying question is one we field in Arizona probate and trust litigation: what happens to a child’s inheritance when a parent dies at the child’s hand? The harder variant, what happens when the parent wanted to die, exposes a statutory gap that has gone unaddressed.

The slayer statute, applied

Under A.R.S. § 14-2803, a person who “feloniously and intentionally” kills the decedent forfeits every benefit the estate plan would otherwise provide: intestate and elective shares, omitted-spouse and omitted-child shares, homestead, exempt property, and family allowance. Revocable dispositions, powers of appointment, and fiduciary nominations are revoked. Joint tenancies and community property with right of survivorship are severed into tenancies in common as of the moment of the killing. The statute authorizes a constructive trust. We discuss this framework in more depth on our page covering the disqualification of beneficiaries under Arizona law.

Even without a criminal conviction, and even after an acquittal, “the court, on the petition of an interested person, shall determine whether, under the preponderance of evidence standard, the person would be found criminally accountable” for homicide under Arizona’s criminal law. The probate forum reaches results the criminal forum cannot.

The mercy-killing variant

Now assume Isak was terminally ill, of sound mind, and had repeatedly asked his son to end his suffering. Despite Isak’s clear intent and desire to die, the criminal exposure and slayer-statute exposure in Arizona do not shift.

Under Arizona law, assisting anyone or even encouraging a minor to commit suicide is a crime.  A conviction, or a probate-court preponderance finding, for assisted suicide triggers the slayer statute the same way a first-degree murder conviction does. Active euthanasia is straight homicide and worse.

Arizona has no Death With Dignity Act, no medical-aid-in-dying carve-out, and no “consent of the decedent” defense to the slayer statute. The statute draws no distinction between the greedy heir who pushes a parent off a cliff and the loving child who, at the parent’s lucid request, helps end terminal suffering. Both forfeit everything.

Thirty years on, the same gap

This is the problem I addressed more than 30 years ago in my law review article, Mercy Killing and the Slayer Rule: Should the Legislatures Change Something?, 67 Tul. L. Rev. 485 (1992). The article opened with the story of Wallace Goulden, who was terminally ill, repeatedly begged his nurse-nephew Wally to end the pain, and finally got his wish through a lethal injection at the bedside. I argued that “no person should benefit from his own wrong” does not translate cleanly to a child acting at a parent’s lucid, repeated request.

In fact, I argued that the slayer statute is a gap filler and should not operate where it is contrary to the true intent of the decedent.  In a typical murder, the victim is effectively presumed to change their intent to benefit their slayer, but the slayer is simultaneously depriving the victim of reflecting that intent in their will or trust.  So, the statute fills that gap.

However, what if, in fact, there was no change in the “victim’s” intent: they wanted to die and they wanted to still leave their estate to the slayer.  Since the foundational purpose of probate law is  to determine and enforce the true wishes of the decedent, I proposed a narrow exception that would preserve inheritance in genuine mercy-killing cases without softening the rule against greed-, hate-, or fear-motivated killings.  Arizona’s statute still does not draw that line.

Takeaways

The criminal forum is not the only forum, or even the most important one; petitions to invoke the slayer statute live and die on civil-standard proof. The “felonious and intentional” definition is broader than clients assume: assisted suicide qualifies. Survivorship interests sever automatically, and payors who keep distributing after written notice become personally liable. No end-of-life context, however sympathetic, currently protects a child’s inheritance under Arizona law. For practitioners on the other side of these matters, our overview of will contests in Arizona walks through the related grounds , such as undue influence and lack of capacity, for challenging an estate plan.

The Andic facts will resolve abroad. The Arizona analog, and the harder mercy-killing variant, will keep producing hard cases here until the legislature acts on something like the proposal I advanced in 1992.

Handling a § 14-2803 question?

Berk Law Group represents fiduciaries and beneficiaries in Arizona slayer-statute petitions, will and trust contests, and related estate and trust litigation, including as co-counsel for out-of-state firms with Arizona-resident decedents or assets. If you have a matter that touches the disqualification of a beneficiary, call us at 480.607.7900 or schedule a consultation.

Kent S. Berk is the founder of Berk Law Group, P.C. in Scottsdale, Arizona, where he concentrates his practice on estate and trust disputes. He is the author of Mercy Killing and the Slayer Rule: Should the Legislatures Change Something?, 67 Tul. L. Rev. 485 (1992).