Florida Statute 732.601
“Simultaneous Death Law”
What it means
Florida's Simultaneous Death Law answers a hard question: who inherits when two people — usually spouses — die in the same event and no one can prove who died first. Unless the governing instrument says otherwise, where there is insufficient evidence that they died other than simultaneously, each person's property passes as if that person survived — each estate flows to its own heirs and beneficiaries rather than through the other victim's.
Florida imposes no minimum survival period. Proof that one person outlived the other by any measurable interval takes the case outside the statute, and the actual survivor inherits.
- Applies only where there is insufficient evidence of the order of death — and only “unless a contrary intention appears in the governing instrument.” A survivorship clause displaces it.
- Each person's property is disposed of as if that person survived, keeping each estate on its own family's side.
- Two joint tenants or tenants by the entirety: the property is split, one-half as if each had survived; among more than two, in equal proportion.
- Life or accident insurance: proceeds pass as if the insured survived the beneficiary.
- There is no 120-hour rule in this section — survival by any provable interval, however short, controls.
How it plays out
We see §732.601 after car accidents and joint medical crises, and the first fight is evidentiary: hospital records and EMS timestamps get combed for proof that one spouse survived the other by minutes, because minutes decide which family inherits. Well-drafted wills and trusts make the statute irrelevant with an express survivorship clause, so the estate never turns on a paramedic's log.