57-1 -- BLACKWELL COMMENT -- CITE CHECK COPY

COMMENTSProperty: Creating a Slayer Statute Oklahomans Can LiveWithI. Introduction“It is almost as important that property law be predictable as that it be1right.” Although not everyone fully agrees with this statement, when the lawis both unpredictable and wrong, change often comes more swiftly. Not so,2however, with Oklahoma’s slayer statute. A slayer statute is a law thatprevents a murderer, or sometimes less-culpable killer, from taking property3as a beneficiary of his victim through testate or intestate succession. Not alljurisdictions have such laws; some states apply common law maxims toachieve the same result, and a very small number of states have yet to apply4the rule at all.5Oklahoma passed its slayer statute in 1915, two years after the OklahomaSupreme Court allowed a man who murdered his wife to take half of her estate6under Oklahoma’s intestacy scheme. The legislature has amended the law7three times since, most recently in 1994. The result is a hodgepodge of laws1. Estate of Propst, 788 P.2d 628, 639 (Cal. 1990) (Broussard, J., concurring anddissenting).2. 84 OKLA. STAT. § 231 (2001).3. Curiously, the term “slayer statute,” although in wide use by commentators, see, e.g.,Brian W. Underdahl, Creating a New Public Policy in Estate of O’Keefe: Judicial LegislationUsing a Slayer Statute in a Novel Way, 44 S.D. L. REV. 828 (1999), has not found its way intoour dictionaries. The closest entry in Black’s Law Dictionary is “slayer’s ...