Notwithstanding incessant nagging by financial planners, lawyers, spouses, insurance salesmen, newspaper columnists and neighborhood watch groups, many people die intestate — without a will. So, you might ask, what happens then?

Well, property not held in joint tenancy or subject to a beneficiary designation in a retirement plan, bank or brokerage account, beneficiary deed, designated beneficiary agreement or insurance policy gets distributed based on rules of intestacy established by the state Legislature.

In Colorado, the rules — which are complex and would make for a good Monopoly-like board game — generally work like this:

The initial cut (after administrative expenses and creditors are paid) determines how much a surviving spouse will receive out of the estate.

A surviving spouse will receive everything in two circumstances: if the dead person (the decedent) leaves no descendants (children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, etc.) and no parents; or if all of the decedent’s descendants are also descendants of the surviving spouse and the surviving spouse has no other living descendants.

If this first set of rules doesn’t solve the what-does-the-spouse-get riddle, a next set of rules comes into play, with the dollar amounts involved receiving a cost-of-living adjustment annually. These rules are:

• If the decedent has no descendants, but does have a living parent or two, the surviving spouse gets the first $372,000 and three-fourths of everything else.

• If the decedent has descendants and they all also are descendants of the surviving spouse, but the surviving spouse has other descendants who are not descendants of the decedent, the surviving spouse gets the first $279,000 and half of everything else.

• If the decedent leaves descendants, but not all of them also are descendants of the surviving spouse, the surviving spouse gets the first $186,000 and half of everything else.

Once the surviving spouse is taken care of, or if there is no surviving spouse, another set of rules comes into play to determine how the remaining estate will be distributed.

Here, descendants sit at the top of the food chain and will get all the remaining money. How the money is distributed, however, again can be complicated. By way of example, if there are four children of the decedent and they all are still alive, the money will be distributed to them equally. But let’s say two of the decedent’s children are dead — one leaving one child and one leaving three children, for a total of four grandchildren. Now, each of the two surviving children of the decedent gets a one-fourth share and each of the four grandchildren gets a one-eighth share. If the decedent has no descendants, next in line will be the decedent’s parents, then surviving descendants of the parents, then grandparents and surviving descendants of grandparents. If there is no spouse and the family tree has no branches or leaves, the money goes to the state. The Legislature tinkered with the intestate distribution maze in 2022 (SB22092), making a few technical changes but nothing dramatic. Those changes took effect Wednesday. There are, of course, many good reasons to have a will, but avoiding this legislatively-imposed estate plan should be reason enough.