How a cousins case starts
Someone dies intestate in New York with no will in the residence. The public administrator looks for a will, sees to burial if none is found, and makes a first search for distributees. Those people are told to get a lawyer before a kinship hearing.
Distribution follows Estates, Powers and Trusts Law § 4-1.1. A spouse with no issue takes the whole. A spouse and issue take fifty thousand dollars and half the residue, with the balance to the issue by representation. After that come parents, then siblings and their issue, then grandparents and their grandchildren — first cousins — split by the maternal and paternal sides. First cousins once removed can take when no closer class exists. If no one proves the line, the estate stays with the State.
Proving the family
The office’s kinship practice is genealogical as much as legal. Family trees have to be rebuilt from records, often across decades and borders, and then proved to the Surrogate and the public administrator.
It is slow, document-heavy work. It is also how distant relatives recover money that would otherwise sit unclaimed.