My mother, when she was studying for the Louisiana bar, explained inheritance law there to me, just a bit. Louisiana law is different from law elsewhere in the US, and up until recently, it was actually illegal to disinherit your biological children. When she talked to me, about ten years ago, it was illegal to disinherit a child under a certain age (29? 30? something like that), and it meant that, if she and my stepfather both died, my half-brother who was under that age would get two thirds of the estate while my sister and I might get one sixth each. (My sister and I were both a decade older and could be disinherited.) Joint property in a marriage is lifetime only in as much as a dead spouse's property must pass to their biological children when the other spouse dies.