## Facts

- Jacob Tim (born Jacob Timiansky) died intestate in Florida, leaving a sizable estate.
- Tim was unmarried, had no children, and did not acknowledge or identify any relatives during his lifetime.
- Tim was from Brest-Litovsk, Russia, a place where many unrelated families shared the surname Timiansky (and variants), making name-based identification uncertain.
- The estate administrator filed a petition in probate court for a determination of heirship.
- Fifty-three people appeared and asserted claims to the estate as relatives of varying degrees.
- Five of those claimants, known as the “Rudawski Group,” asserted they were Tim’s collateral blood relatives and offered genealogical and circumstantial proof to connect their family line to Tim.
- The State of Florida filed a claim seeking escheat of the estate on the ground that no lawful heirs had been established under Florida intestacy law.
- After hearing evidence, the probate judge found that none of the 53 claimants had proved a legally sufficient relationship to Tim and ordered the estate to escheat to the State, reasoning that a shared surname and common place of origin were inadequate given the number of unrelated families with the same surname.
- The Third District Court of Appeal reversed, concluding the Rudawski Group had established heirship, and certified the matter to the Florida Supreme Court as a question of great public interest.

## Issues

1. In an intestate estate escheat proceeding, must the State affirmatively prove that no heirs exist, or do putative heirs bear the burden to prove their entitlement to take?
2. Did the Third District err by overturning the probate court’s fact findings and concluding the Rudawski Group proved heirship on this record?

## Decision

- The Florida Supreme Court quashed the Third District’s decision and directed that the probate court’s escheat order be affirmed.
- The Court held that the State was not required to prove the nonexistence of heirs; rather, claimants had to prove their status as heirs, and the probate court’s determination that they failed to do so was supported by the evidence.

## Legal Principles

- A person claiming an intestate estate as an heir bears the burden to prove the claimed familial relationship by competent evidence.
- The State is not required to prove a universal negative—that no heirs exist anywhere—before an intestate estate may escheat.
- Where the trier of fact finds the offered proof of kinship insufficient, an appellate court should not substitute its own view of the evidence for supported factual determinations.
- Similarity of surname and shared origin, without more reliable connecting proof, may be inadequate to establish heirship when the surname is common among unrelated families from the same locality.
- If no claimant establishes entitlement to take under intestacy law, the statutory condition for escheat is met and the estate passes to the State.

## Conclusion

The Florida Supreme Court reinstated the probate court’s escheat order, ruling that alleged heirs must prove their relationship to the decedent and that the State need not disprove the existence of heirs; because the Rudawski Group and other claimants did not provide sufficient proof of kinship, Tim’s intestate estate properly escheated to Florida.


State v. Rudawski (In re Estate of Tim), 180 So. 2d 161 (1965)