• The current version of the Uniform Probate Code uses a sliding scale that increases with each year of marriage. Under the UPC, a surviving spouse has accrued full marital-property rights after 15 years of marriage. This percentage of spousal entitlement is applied to a reconceptualization of the decedent’s estate to take into account more than just the assets remaining in the probate estate at death. Also added into the calculation are the value of certain inter vivos transfers that the decedent made to others in a way that depleted the probate estate; the value of similar transfers made to others by the spouse as well as the value of the marital property owned by the spouse at the decedent’s death; and the value of inter vivos transfers of property made by the decedent to the spouse. The Uniform Probate Code adopted this version of the augmented-estate concept in an attempt to equalize the treatment of surviving spouses in non-community-property states vis-à-vis community-property states. Unif. Probate Code § 2-202. See ELECTIVE SHARE. [Cases: Wills 778–803. C.J.S. Wills §§ 1841–1879.]
augmented estate
A refinement of the elective share to which a surviving spouse is entitled, whereby the “fair share” is identified as something other than the traditional one-third of the probate estate.
