In re Estate of Mahoney, 126 Vt. 31, 220 A.2d 475 (1966), is the Vermont Supreme Court decision that answered whether someone who kills their spouse can inherit from them when the state’s intestacy statutes name the killer as the heir. The court’s answer was practical: legal title passes to the killer exactly as the statute directs, but a court of equity treats the killer as a constructive trustee and compels transfer of the property to the victim’s other heirs. Vermont could follow its inheritance code to the letter and still refuse to let a killer keep what the killing produced.
The Facts
Howard Mahoney died without a will. His wife, Charlotte Mahoney, was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in connection with his death and sentenced to a maximum of 15 years in prison. Because Howard left no will, Vermont’s intestacy statutes controlled the distribution of his property, and those statutes named Charlotte, as surviving spouse, the primary heir.
The Vermont Supreme Court described the question as “one of first impression in this jurisdiction.”1vLex United States. Mahoney’s Estate, In Re No prior Vermont decision had addressed a killer inheriting from the victim, and the legislature had written no exception into the code.
Why the Statute Created the Problem
Vermont’s inheritance framework for people who died without a will was governed by 14 V.S.A. § 401 and related provisions, which set out how property flowed to a surviving spouse and other relatives.2Vermont General Assembly. Vermont Statutes Title 14, Section 401 – Survivors’ Rights and Allowances Nothing in those statutes disqualified a beneficiary who had killed the decedent. Read literally, Charlotte was entitled to Howard’s property.
The probate court had no authority to add conditions the legislature had not written. So the question was not whether Charlotte should inherit as a matter of decency; it was whether any Vermont court had the power to stop her.
Three Competing Theories
With no Vermont precedent and no slayer provision in the code, the court surveyed how other jurisdictions had handled the same dilemma and identified three approaches.3CaseMine. In Re Mahoney Estate
The Killer Inherits
Under this view, property passes to the killer because that is what the statute says, and courts have no authority to rewrite legislation. Proponents argued that barring the killer amounts to an additional punishment beyond the criminal sentence, and some courts raised constitutional concerns about “corruption of blood,” the idea that legal penalties should not extend to property rights beyond the sentence itself.
Title Never Passes
The opposite approach holds that the killer simply never receives the property, treating them as though they predeceased the victim. Courts relied on the common-law maxim that no one should profit from their own crime. Critics said this grafted an exception onto the inheritance statute that the legislature never enacted, calling it “unwarranted judicial legislation.”3CaseMine. In Re Mahoney Estate
Title Passes, Then a Constructive Trust
The third approach threaded the needle. Legal title passes to the killer as the statute directs, satisfying the probate court’s obligation to follow the code. Because the killer obtained the property through an unconscionable act, a court of equity treats the killer as a constructive trustee and compels transfer of the assets to the victim’s other heirs.
What the Court Held
The Vermont Supreme Court adopted the third theory. It wrote: “The legal title passes to the slayer but equity holds him to be a constructive trustee for the heirs or next of kin of the decedent. This disposition of the question presented avoids a judicial engrafting on the statutory laws of descent and distribution, for title passes to the slayer. But because of the unconscionable mode by which the property is acquired by the slayer, equity treats him as a constructive trustee and compels him to convey the property to the heirs or next of kin of the deceased.”1vLex United States. Mahoney’s Estate, In Re
The procedural split mattered. Vermont’s probate court had limited jurisdiction and was bound to follow the intestacy statutes as written; it could not refuse to award Charlotte her share. The chancery court, sitting in equity, had the authority to impose the constructive trust and redirect the property. That division of labor let Vermont honor the letter of its statutes while reaching a just result.
The Intent Limit
The court did not bar every killer from inheriting. It limited the constructive trust remedy to deaths resulting from a willful and unlawful act. Someone who caused a death through ordinary negligence or in genuine self-defense would not automatically lose inheritance rights.
Charlotte’s voluntary manslaughter conviction met the threshold. Voluntary manslaughter is an intentional killing, even if provoked or committed in the heat of passion, and that intentionality is what the court required. An involuntary manslaughter conviction might not trigger the rule, because the killing lacks deliberate intent. Where a particular case falls on that spectrum is fact-intensive, and later courts have continued to work through it.
The Doctrine Before Vermont
Mahoney did not arise in a vacuum. American courts had been sorting out killer-inheritance disputes for decades. The U.S. Supreme Court addressed a closely related issue in 1886 in Mutual Life Insurance Co. v. Armstrong, holding that allowing someone to collect insurance proceeds on a life they had “feloniously taken” would be “a reproach to the jurisprudence of the country.”4Legal Information Institute. Mutual Life Ins. Co. of New York v. Armstrong Three years later, the New York Court of Appeals decided Riggs v. Palmer (1889), barring a grandson who poisoned his grandfather from taking under the will despite a dissent arguing the statute of wills compelled the opposite result.
By the time Charlotte’s case reached the Vermont Supreme Court in 1966, the equitable principle was well established elsewhere. Vermont was formalizing an approach the rest of the country had largely worked out.
What Replaced Mahoney in Vermont
Mahoney was a judicial fix for a legislative gap, and Vermont eventually closed the gap. Today, 14 V.S.A. § 322 provides that any individual who “intentionally and unlawfully kills the decedent” forfeits their share of the estate, which then passes to the remaining heirs or beneficiaries. The statute also provides that a criminal conviction for intentionally and unlawfully killing the decedent is admissible in the probate proceeding and “conclusively establishes” that the individual committed the killing.5Vermont General Assembly. Vermont Code Title 14, Chapter 42, Section 322 – Unlawful Killing Affecting Inheritance
With that statute in place, a Vermont probate court no longer needs a separate equity proceeding to reach the result Mahoney produced. Forfeiture happens inside the probate process. The constructive trust framework is no longer the primary Vermont mechanism, but the case remains the intellectual foundation for how the state arrived at its current law and continues to influence jurisdictions that still lack their own slayer statutes.
Why the Case Still Gets Taught
The decision is a staple of law school curricula because it cleanly illustrates the tension between legislative supremacy and equitable justice. The probate court was right that it could not rewrite the inheritance statute. The equity court was right that letting Charlotte keep Howard’s property would be unconscionable. The constructive trust was the tool that let both courts be right at once. For anyone researching inheritance disputes involving a killing, Mahoney is the clearest example of how a court can respect the letter of the law while refusing to let a killer profit from the death they caused.