§36-1-20 When survivorship preserved. - West Virginia Statutes

§36-1-20. When survivorship preserved.
(a) The preceding section shall not apply to any estate which joint tenants have as executors or trustees, nor to an estate conveyed or devised to persons in their own right, when it manifestly appears from the tenor of the instrument that it was intended that the part of the one dying should then belong to the others. Neither shall it affect the mode of proceeding on any joint judgment or decree in favor of, or on any contract with, two or more, one of whom dies.

(b) When the instrument of conveyance or ownership in any estate, whether real estate or tangible or intangible personal property, links multiple owners together with the disjunctive "or," such ownership shall be held as joint tenants with the right of survivorship, unless expressly stated otherwise.

(c) No person convicted of violating the provisions of section one or three, article two, chapter sixty-one of this code as a principal, aider and abettor or accessory before the fact, or convicted of a similar provision of law of another state or the United States, may take or acquire any real or personal property by survivorship pursuant to this section when the victim of the criminal offense was a joint holder of title to the property. The property to which the person so convicted would otherwise have been entitled shall go to the person or persons who would have taken the same if the person so convicted had predeceased the victim.