the statute is there to protect when someone gets married or just fails to update their estate plan. They marry an individual and they prepare an estate plan maybe 10 years ago and they stay married for three to four years and they just never get around to changing their estate plan. And generally, the spouse will be entitled to their intestate share of the assets, which would be the same assets that the spouse would be able to get if there was no will.

The other kind of omitted spouse you’ll find is when a spouse writes out their spouse. Generally, there are community property laws in the state of California that protects a spouse from this. It could be that the spouse is entitled to an allowance during the time of the litigation so they may be entitled to money right away, and they can bring a spousal property petition or a petition to determine entitlement to receive at least their half share of community property.

Now a spouse can write out someone from their estate plan from their own separate property or their one-half share but again, that’s not very common. You see that less and less.