According to the court in Armstrong v. Armstrong, a 2015 Mississippi case, a paranoid schizophrenic who kills his 80 year-old mother with a crochet-covered brick, repeatedly stabs her, and then bleeds the body to prepare it for burial, might still inherit, since a willful killing under the state’s slayer statute requires not being completely insane. (Courtesy of Steve R. Akers, senior fiduciary counsel at Bessemer Trust)