The Uniform Simultaneous Death Act is a law that provides clarification for the inheritance of estates if two people die within 120 hours of one another.
This act states that instead of the estate of the first person being passed on to the second person, it will be passed on to relatives of the decedents. The purpose of doing this is to prevent the people who are inheriting the estates from having to pay administrative costs twice.
Without this law, the estate of the first person who died could be forced to go through the probate process twice.
For example, if a husband died, and then one day later his wife died, the estate would have to go through the probate process twice. First, it would have to go through the process so that the husband's estate could be passed on to the wife. Second, it would have to go through the process so that it could then be passed on to other relatives.
The Uniform Simultaneous Death Act prevents this unnecessary amount of legal proceedings from taking place.