History Main / InheritanceMurder

Typically, inheriting will require a will, so [[WillAndInheritanceTropes tropes relating to that]] are often in play. A variant is for the murderer to be not the beneficiary of inheritance but the person who'd administer it, which may let them get their hands on it just as well. Another variant, especially in more modern works, is for the murderer to be after not an inheritance but [[InsuranceFraud an insurance payout]], a different way to benefit from offing your nearest and dearest.

A subtrope of MurderInTheFamily. Compare TheEvilPrince, if the inheritance the person is after is their father's throne and OnlyCaresAboutInheritance, if a character comes to someone's funeral and/or deathbed in hopes of getting an inheritance.

* ''Film/{{Amos}}'': Invoked. Amos finds himself in a retirement home from hell. Seeing no escape, Amos changes the beneficiary on his insurance policy to head nurse Daisy, then aggravates her brutal orderly into beating him into bed. When Amos is found dead the next morning, an autopsy reveals a lethal dose of sedatives in his system; Daisy is arrested for first-degree murder, as the policy change was dated the night before.

* ''Film/DoubleJeopardy'' (a GenderFlip of ''The Fugitive'') uses this too, with the wrongly accused wife being accused of killing her husband for his life insurance.

* ''Film/FourBrothers'': Jeremiah is accused of this as the brothers are trying to figure out the motive behind their mother's murder. They discover that Jeremiah had been paying on an insurance policy for Evelyn and now is primed to receive a $400k payout which would conveniently bail out his struggling construction business. The accusation leads to Jeremiah delivering a blistering TheReasonYouSuckSpeech
-->'''Jeremiah:'''Y'all tripping because I made insurance payments? What?! I paid all her bills! Where the fuck were y'all? Y'all were around doing nothing! Bullshitting!
* ''Film/TheFugitive'': After Richard Kimble escaped from the prison bus, [=U.S.=] Marshall Gerard questions the detectives who handled the investigation that got Kimble the death penalty, [[MotiveEqualsConclusiveEvidence they state that he was convicted because he was named the sole recipient of his wife's life insurance payout.]] When Gerard mentions that Kimble was already a very wealthy doctor, the detectives respond that she "was more rich."

* Some of the cases the Five-0 unit investigate in ''Series/HawaiiFive0'' end up with this being played out, although it's not always played straight. One example: in the fifth season episode "Ka Hana Malu", the sons of a murdered couple are initially suspected of arranging it to collect a large insurance payout, but it turns out that the mother had actually arranged it herself to secure her sons' future. But in "Hoʻamoano", the suspect in the murder of a woman turns out to be her half-brother, who killed her in fear that he'll lose some of his inheritance to her.

** "Mr. Monk and the Genius" has a professional chess player who takes out a large life insurance policy on his wife and then poisons her. This is the second time he's done it.

** One short story has a young lord murdered, supposedly by an Egyptian curse. It's actually by the expedition's doctor, who was friends with him years earlier when he jokingly made a will leaving the doctor as his heir (as he stated his actual assets would likely be limited to a cigarette case and bar tabs). When the lord's rich and only relative dies, the doctor realizes there's a fortune to be made and strikes. Shame Literature/HerculePoirot was there...

A subtrope of MurderInTheFamily. Compare TheEvilPrince, if the inheritance the person is after is their father's throne.

* The first half of ''Film/{{Hex}}'', a Creator/ShawBrothers horror-mystery film, is driven by Leung Chun-yu, the VillainProtagonist GoldDigger's attempts to arrange for his wife's death - by [[FakingTheDead faking his own]] (with some help from the wife's alleged close friend who turns out to be in cahoots with Chun-yu), and coming back as a ghost to haunt her until she dies of shock. With the wife out of the way, Chun-yu, being the last surviving member of the family, is free to claim the wife's inheritance, a vault filled with priceless jade artifacts.

"She's laughing up at us from hell"

* ''WesternAnimation/LaBalladeDesDalton'': Henry Dalton's nephews Joe, William, Jack, and Averell will inherit his fortune [[OnOneCondition if they kill the judge and the jury who sentenced him to death by hanging]].

** "Mr. Monk and the Leper" features a sort of inverted version. A woman kills her CEO husband, only to find that he had left the bulk of his fortune to his sister and nephews. Since they NeverFoundTheBody the matter of his death is left open, letting her live large until several years later when the actual inheritors petition to have him officially declared dead. She ends up orchestrating a scheme to make it look like the victim is still alive and in hiding so she can keep living off his money.

** "Mr. Monk and the Leper" features a sort of inverted version. A woman kills her CEO husband, only to find that he had left the bulk of his fortune to his sister and nephews. Since they NeverFoundTheBody the matter of his death is left open, letting her live large until several years later when the actual inheritors petition to have him officially declared dead. She ends up orchestrating a scheme to make it look like the victim is still alive and in hiding so she can keep living off his money.

** In ''Mr. Monk Gets Hypnotized'', a woman is apparently abducted by her massively wealthy Fiction500 husband while they're going through a rocky divorce and kills him in the escape. It turns that thanks to a prenup she wouldn't be seeing a dime from the divorce, so she bumped him off before it was finalized and staged the kidnapping as a SelfDefenseRuse.
** In ''Mr. Monk and the Sidekick'', the killer murders his rich wife so he can collect her inheritance and a large life insurance policy. He makes it look like she died in a car wreck but an unfortunately-timed landslide buries her and the car; since he can't inherit anything until she's officially dead, and he can't exactly go and dig her up himself, he drugs a PhonyPsychic and makes it look like she found her instead.
** ''Mr. Monk and the Leper'' features a sort of inverted version. A woman kills her CEO husband, only to find that he had left the bulk of his fortune to his sister and nephews. Since they NeverFoundTheBody the matter of his death is left open, letting her live large until several years later when the actual inheritors petition to have him officially declared dead. She ends up orchestrating a scheme to make it look like the victim is still alive and in hiding so she can keep living off his money.
** Another variation: In ''Mr. Monk and the Other Woman'', the killer finds out that his uncle cut him out of his will. While he doesn't kill the uncle (who's on the verge of death anyways) he ''does'' break into his uncle's lawyer's office and switch the will with one leaving him everything, before murdering the lawyer who would obviously know the contents of the real thing.

** ''Mr. Monk and the Leper'' revolves a sort of inverted version. A woman kills her CEO husband, but it turns out he had left the bulk of his fortune to his sister and nephews. Since they NeverFoundTheBody the matter of his death is left open, letting her live large until several years later when the actual inheritors petition to have him officially declared dead. She ends up orchestrating a scheme to make it look like the victim is still alive and in hiding so she can keep living off his money.

** In ''Mr. Monk Gets Hypnotized'', a woman is apparently abducted by her massively wealthy Fiction500 husband while they're going through a rocky divorce and kills him in the escape. It turns she had signed a prenup that would prevent her from cashing out on the divorce, so she bumped him staged the entire kidnapping so she could inherit his millions before the divorce was finalized.

** In ''Mr. Monk Gets Hypnotized'', a woman is apparently abducted by her massively wealthy Fiction500 husband while they're going through a rocky divorce and kills him in the escape. It turns she had signed a kidnapping that would prevent her from cashing out on the divorce, so she bumped him staged the entire kidnapping so she could inherit his millions before the divorce was finalized.

* Mentionned in Music/TaylorSwift's "Anti-Hero" from ''Music/{{Midnights}}''. The narrator dreams about her [[ObnoxiousInLaws daughter-in-law]] killing her for her money. The joke's on her, though - while the lyrics simply imply that the narrator didn't leave them in the will, the music video expands upon it by having the children receive 13 cents and the narrator's beach house being given to [[PetHeir her cats]].

* ''Series/MidsomerMurders'' had a rich {{Jerkass}} tell two or three people they'd be the sole inheritors of his fortune (without informing the others), just so that they'd show up to the reading and discover they got nothing. Since he's [[BodyOfTheWeek episode's first victim]], and some of the claimants follow him, there is naturally suspicion about this trope being in play.

* The ''ComicBook/LuckyLuke'' comic ''The Inheritance of Rantanplan'' has the guard dog Rantanplan inherit a fortune from a former convict, who also decided to make Joe Dalton next in line. The Dalton brothers promptly escape and Luke spends most of the book protecting Rantanplan from murder attempts, until [[spoiler:the former convict is found still alive]].
* In ''{{ComicBook/Violine}}'', Muller and Marushka have Francois' parents murdered by the doctor to get the house from Francois. This puts Francois and his daughter Violine as the last persons standing in their way.

* Discussed for laughs in the Franchise/StarWarsLegends fic, "[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/42138075 How To Succeed Without Even Trying]]" of the Fanfic/LimpetAU series. Luke asks Vader if he has a will, and when Vader asks why he wants to know, Luke flippantly mentions that Leia's cutting his funding for the Jedi Academy, so he's planning to kill Vader to get his inheritance.

* Invoked in the made-for-TV movie ''Film/{{Amos}}'', in which Amos finds himself in a retirement home from hell. Seeing no escape, Amos changes the beneficiary on his insurance policy to head nurse Daisy, then aggravates her brutal orderly into beating him into bed. When Amos is found dead the next morning, an autopsy reveals a lethal dose of sedatives in his system; Daisy is arrested for first-degree murder, as the policy change was dated the night before.

* The Mexican movie ''El miedo no anda en burro'' (Fear Doesn't Ride a Donkey), starring "la India Maria," has this as its central plot. When the matriarch of a wealthy family dies, her greedy relatives kick out Maria, [[EthnicMenialLabor who had been working as a maid,]] and was the matriarch's only friend, and they forced her to take the old lady's beloved little dog with her. At the will reading, the lawyer states that the [[PetHeir matriarch's estate and money will go to her dog,]] and Maria will act as its regent, [[PassedOverInheritance leaving the relatives with nothing.]] [[HilarityEnsues The rest of the movie centers on the relatives trying to scare Maria to death so that they can get hold of the dog.]]

* In ''Film/TheFugitive'', after Richard Kimble escaped from the prison bus, [=U.S.=] Marshall Gerard questions the detectives who handled the investigation that got Kimble the death penalty, [[MotiveEqualsConclusiveEvidence they state that he was convicted because he was named the sole recipient of his wife's life insurance payout.]] When Gerard mentions that Kimble was already a very wealthy doctor, the detectives respond that she "was more rich."

* In ''Film/AWomansFace'', Torsten was to inherit his uncle's fortune, but then Lars-Erik was born. His plan is to kill him, make it look like an accident, and he wants Anna to do it for him.

* The motive behind the murders in ''Film/SleepyHollow1999''.