Dependent
Somebody who relies on you. It is a defined term in tax and in benefit programs, and it is not a category in inheritance law at all.
What it means
In ordinary speech a dependent is anyone who relies on you financially. In law there is no single definition, and that is the thing worth knowing. The tax code has its own test, involving relationship, residence, income and how much of somebody's support you pay. Each benefit program has its own, set by that program. An insurance policy or an employer plan means whatever its own document says.
State inheritance law has no dependent category. It distributes to relatives in a statutory order, so somebody who lived on your income for twenty years is not on that list unless a document you signed puts them there.
The consequence is that qualifying in one sense carries nothing into another. Being claimed on a tax return creates no right to inherit; being covered on a health plan creates no right to a death benefit.
Why it matters
It is the assumption behind a whole class of planning failure: somebody concludes that because a person is listed as their dependent somewhere, that person is provided for.
It also cuts the other way. Somebody who is nobody's dependent in any technical sense may still be entirely reliant on you, and the fix in both directions is the same, which is naming them.
When you are likely to meet it
- When a form asks how many dependents you have and you are not sure which sense it means.
- When working out what happens to the people who rely on you if you die or cannot act.
- When somebody who was supported turns out to inherit nothing.
For example
A man claims his mother as a dependent on his tax return for nine years. When he dies without a will, his state's statutory order gives his estate to his children, and his mother receives nothing from it.
How this varies by state
Who inherits by default, and whether a stepchild or an unmarried partner is reached by any provision, is set by each state.