Imagine this scenario: someone falls in love, marries, falls out of love, doesn’t divorce, but writes their spouse out of their will. Then they die—blissfully believing the spouse will get nothing. In Florida, they would be wrong. Regardless of which spouse has means and dies, Florida’s elective share laws ensure that the surviving spouse receives a portion of the estate, so long as the surviving spouse meets the necessary deadlines.

The Florida legislature created the elective share in 1974 to keep husbands who die from writing their wives out of their estate plan, thus leaving the surviving family without the financial wherewithal to make ends meet. At the same time, it abolished the historical concept of dower and curtesy, which gave unequal shares of a decedent’s estate to a widower versus a widow, with more significant amounts favoring a widower.