Survivorship, Generally. Where the title to property or the devolution thereof depends upon priority of death and there is no sufficient evidence that the persons have died otherwise than simultaneously, the property of each person shall be disposed of as if such person had survived, except as otherwise provided in this Chapter. SOURCE: California Probate Code, § 296. COMMENT: Chapter 13 of this Title consists of the Uniform Simultaneous Death Act (U.S.D.A.), which comprised §§ 296 - 296.8 of the Probate Code of Guam (1970). The U.S.D.A., or some version thereof, has been adopted in virtually every jurisdiction of the United States, as well as in the Virgin Islands, the Panama Canal Zone, and Guam. Its purpose is to A...supplant the former arbitrary and complicated presumption of survivorship with effective, workable and equitable rules applicable to the ever- increasing number of cases where two or more persons have died under such circumstances that there is no sufficient evidence to indicate that they have died otherwise than simultaneously,@ In re Schmidt's Estate (1968), 67 Cal. Rptr. 847, 261 C.A.2d 262. In keeping with the general structure of this Title, the Commission has decided to use the California version of the U.S.D.A.; this was
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also apparently done in the Probate Code of Guam (1970), and only minor changes from prior law have been made in Chapter 13. These changes have been made for three reasons: to make certain Sections easier to read; to make the provisions of the U.S.D.A. read sex-neutrally to the greatest extent practicable (under the general mandate of Public Law 14-28); and to bring Guam's version of the Act into conformity with certain other revisions of this Title, notably in the area of community property -- i.e., §§ 1309 and 1311, infra.