South Carolina Estate Planning Law: The Complete Attorney’s Guide

If you live in Charleston, Greenville, Columbia, or elsewhere in South Carolina, a useful estate plan answers four practical questions: who should care for minor children, who should manage an inheritance for them, who can make financial and medical decisions during incapacity, and which assets should pass through Probate Court. For parents, the guardian and trustee do not have to be the same person, and a trust can hold a child’s inheritance beyond age 18 with distributions at selected ages or milestones. This guide explains the governing South Carolina statutes and links to the official code so you can verify the rules. To compare planning options, review revocable living trusts and flat-fee estate planning, or schedule a consultation.

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South Carolina’s Probate Court: the defining structural fact

South Carolina gives its county Probate Courts jurisdiction over decedents’ estates, protected persons, and trusts as specified in S.C. Code § 62-1-302. For an estate, venue generally follows the decedent’s domicile. That court appoints the personal representative, receives required filings, and resolves contested probate issues. The correct county and procedure can change when a decedent lived elsewhere, owned property in multiple states, or left competing instruments, so those facts should be reviewed before filing.

If a South Carolinian dies without a will (S.C. Code §§ 62-2-101 — 62-2-114)

Part 1 of Article 2 of the Probate Code controls when there is no valid will. SC follows the UPC’s “single-pool” approach: the probate estate is treated as one bucket rather than carved up between real and personal property. That is structurally different from many older states (which still treat realty separately) and is one of the cleanest examples of SC’s UPC heritage in everyday practice.

Spouse, no descendants

The surviving spouse takes the entire intestate estate. Parents and siblings of the decedent take nothing under intestacy when there is a spouse and no descendants — a result that occasionally surprises families.

Spouse plus descendants

The split is 50/50 — half to the surviving spouse, half to the decedent’s descendants by representation — regardless of the number of children. There is no $60,000 first-cut for the spouse, no “spouse plus one child” versus “spouse plus two children” distinction. One child or four children, the surviving spouse still takes one-half. That is a deliberate UPC simplification and a clean point of contrast for clients who have lived in states with more layered rules.

Descendants but no spouse, and the remoter takers

With no surviving spouse, descendants take by representation. If there are no descendants, the statute moves to parents, then descendants of parents, then grandparents and their descendants, and ultimately to the State if no statutory taker exists. Under S.C. Code § 62-2-106, the estate is divided at the nearest generation containing a surviving heir or a deceased person who left surviving descendants; each surviving heir at that level takes a share, and each deceased person’s share is divided among that person’s descendants in the same manner.

Heir property and the practical SC problem

Repeated intestate transfers can create “heirs’ property”: family land owned by multiple cotenants, sometimes across several generations. South Carolina’s Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act, S.C. Code §§ 15-61-310 et seq., adds valuation, notice, buyout, and sale protections in qualifying partition cases. A will and coordinated title planning can reduce future fractional ownership, but an existing heirs’ property problem may require separate title, probate, or partition work.

SC wills: Article 2, Part 5 — and the strictness on handwritten documents

Part 5 of Article 2 governs South Carolina wills. The baseline rule in S.C. Code § 62-2-502 requires a writing, the testator’s signature (or a directed signature made in the testator’s presence), and signatures from at least two people who witnessed the signing or the testator’s acknowledgment.

§ 62-2-502: the execution formalities

A South Carolina will ordinarily must be in writing, signed by the testator or by another person in the testator’s presence and at the testator’s direction, and signed by at least two witnesses. Each witness must have witnessed either the signing or the testator’s acknowledgment of the signature or the will. Those are execution requirements; notarization is addressed separately through the self-proving procedure.

Unwitnessed handwritten wills: the SC rule and the foreign-will exception

A will made by a South Carolina resident under South Carolina law ordinarily does not become valid merely because it is handwritten; it still must satisfy the two-witness rule in § 62-2-502. But the analysis does not stop there for a will executed elsewhere. Under S.C. Code § 62-2-505, a written will can be valid if its execution complied with the law of the place of execution or the testator’s domicile at execution or death. A handwritten out-of-state will therefore needs a choice-of-law review rather than an automatic yes or no.

§ 62-2-503: the self-proving affidavit

Under S.C. Code § 62-2-503, a will may be executed, attested, and made self-proved at the same signing, or an already attested will may later be made self-proved. The procedure uses the testator’s acknowledgment and the affidavit of at least one witness before an officer authorized to administer oaths. Self-proof supplies evidence of due execution for probate; it does not eliminate the two subscribing witnesses required by § 62-2-502.

Revocation and the effect of divorce

Revocation is by a later instrument executed with will formalities, or by a physical act done with intent to revoke. Article 2 also revokes dispositions and fiduciary appointments in favor of a former spouse by operation of law upon dissolution of marriage — a quiet trap when a divorced testator believes the will still controls and the operative provisions have actually been struck.

The South Carolina Trust Code (Title 62, Article 7)

SC adopted the Uniform Trust Code as Article 7. Most of the SC Trust Code tracks the UTC verbatim, with state-specific drift in a few places — most notably the treatment of trust modification and the trustee’s duty to inform and report. The practical centerpiece for most clients is the revocable living trust.

§ 62-7-401 — what it takes to create one

A trust may be created by transferring property to a trustee, by a signed declaration that the owner holds identifiable property as trustee, or by exercising a power of appointment in favor of a trustee. S.C. Code §§ 62-7-401 and 62-7-402 also address capacity, intent, beneficiaries or permitted purposes, trustee duties, and public-policy limits. A trust of real property must be evidenced by a signed writing; personal-property trusts can be proved under the statute’s clear-and-convincing-evidence standard.

§ 62-7-602 — the revocability presumption

For a trust instrument governed by the current Trust Code, S.C. Code § 62-7-602 provides that the settlor may revoke or amend the trust unless its terms expressly make it irrevocable. The trust’s stated method controls when made exclusive; otherwise, the statute supplies alternative methods and evidentiary rules. Older instruments and multi-settlor trusts require separate analysis under the statute.

Putting assets into the trust

A revocable trust controls an asset only after ownership or beneficiary arrangements are coordinated with the plan. South Carolina real property may be transferred by a properly prepared and recorded deed; banks and brokerages use their own retitling and beneficiary procedures; and some personal property may be addressed by assignment. Our trust engagements include deed work when appropriate and written funding instructions. The client completes the account, beneficiary, and institutional paperwork required by each financial company. See trust funding for the practical workflow.

Trustee duties under § 62-7-813

S.C. Code § 62-7-813 addresses notices, information requests, and reports to beneficiaries. Which duties apply can depend on the trust terms, whether the trust remains revocable, and a person’s status under the Trust Code. Reporting language should therefore be drafted with the trust’s beneficiary structure in mind rather than copied from a generic form.

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SC Uniform Power of Attorney Act (Title 62, Article 8)

Article 8 of Title 62 is SCR