ENROLLED
H. B. 2707
(By Delegate Michael)
[Passed March 13, 1999; in effect ninety days from passage.]
AN ACT to amend and reenact section twenty, article one, chapter
thirty-six of the code of West Virginia, one thousand nine
hundred thirty-one, as amended, relating to prohibiting
certain convicted felons from obtaining the victim's share
in joint property through survivorship.
Be it enacted by the Legislature of West Virginia:
That section twenty, article one, chapter thirty-six of the
code of West Virginia, one thousand nine hundred thirty-one, as
amended, be amended and reenacted to read as follows:
ARTICLE 1. CREATION OF ESTATES GENERALLY.
§36-1-20. When survivorship preserved.
(a) The preceding section shall not apply to any estate
which joint tenants have as executors or trustees, nor to an
estate conveyed or devised to persons in their own right, when it
manifestly appears from the tenor of the instrument that it was intended that the part of the one dying should then belong to the
others. Neither shall it affect the mode of proceeding on any
joint judgment or decree in favor of, or on any contract with,
two or more, one of whom dies.
(b) When the instrument of conveyance or ownership in any
estate, whether real estate or tangible or intangible personal
property, links multiple owners together with the disjunctive
"or," such ownership shall be held as joint tenants with the
right of survivorship, unless expressly stated otherwise.
(c) No person convicted of violating the provisions of
section one or three, article two, chapter sixty-one of this code
as a principal, aider and abettor or accessory before the fact,
or convicted of a similar provision of law of another state or
the United States, may take or acquire any real or personal
property by survivorship pursuant to this section when the victim
of the criminal offense was a joint holder of title to the
property. The property to which the person so convicted would
otherwise have been entitled shall go to the person or persons
who would have taken the same if the person so convicted had
predeceased the victim.