Atlanta attorney Claud “Tex” McIver's dire finances are going to get a whole lot worse.

McIver's murder conviction Monday for the 2016 death of his wife, Diane, triggered a Georgia law known as the “slayer statute.” If a husband slays his wife, the statute mandates that the assets of the victim's estate be administered as if the culprit died first.

Anyone convicted of felonious or intentional murder who is an executor or beneficiary of the victim's estate is barred both from inheriting or remaining as executor under the statute, said Skip Sugarman of Atlanta's Sugarman Law, who specializes in estate and trusts litigation and followed the trial.

“Basically, the slayer statute disinherits you from someone if you kill them,” he said. “It seems obvious, but it used not to be the law. Until the 1950s, there was no law that automatically disinherited you.”

However, if the Fulton County jury that convicted McIver of murder instead found him guilty of involuntary manslaughter, the slayer statute would not have prevented the former Fisher & Phillips partner from inheriting or administering her estate, Sugarman said.

“The standard is 'intentionally and feloniously,'” Sugarman said in describing deaths that trigger the slayer statute. “Felony murder qualifies.”

McIver, 75, was found guilty of felony murder, aggravated assault, possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony and influencing witness Dani Jo Carter. The jury acquitted McIver of malice murder and rejected an option to convict him of involuntary manslaughter.

He faces a mandatory life sentence when he returns to court May 23. His defense team has said it will appeal.

On Tuesday, state Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver, a Decatur attorney appointed as executor after McIver was removed last year, confirmed “The Georgia slayer statute becomes relevant, and there are many issues to be resolved” regarding Diane McIver's estate. Oliver would not elaborate.

But Ken Rickert, general counsel of U.S. Enterprises where Diane McIver was president when she died and the designated trustee of her estate's assets, said he met with Oliver Tuesday about what happens next. He said Tex McIver can no longer claim the proceeds from an insurance policy on his wife's life valued at more than $600,000. He also said the estate intends to fight to prevent McIver from claiming his wife's 401(k) account containing about $275,000.

Rickert also said the estate is pursuing a claim against McIver's auto insurance policy. McIver shot his wife through the back as he sat in the rear passenger seat of the couple's Ford Expedition, which was being driven by Carter. Diane McIver was in the front passenger seat.

Atlanta attorney Robin Frazer Clark was hired by the estate to handle that insurance claim. She confirmed that she was representing the estate but declined further comment.

McIver's defense team claimed the shooting was unintentional and that McIver had no reason to kill the woman he loved.

But prosecutors presented evidence that McIver was in financial trouble, that his income plummeted after he was stripped of his equity partnership at Fisher Phillips in 2013, that he was increasingly indebted to her and that her death restored his sole ownership of the couple's 85-acre ranch near Lake Oconee southeast of Atlanta.

McIver owned the ranch when the couple married in 2005. Diane McIver gave him $750,000 to invest in the ranch shortly before the wedding. Afterward, he gave her a half-interest in the property, according to court testimony.

Diane McIver's death on Sept. 26, 2016, immediately gave her husband access to $1.1 million in assets and made him executor of her estate with access to potentially millions more, prosecutors said. Without a $20,000 cash infusion she gave her husband the month before he shot her, Tex McIver's accounts would have been short $5,000. McIver also had no investment portfolio to draw on, according to a forensic accountant who testified at trial.

McIver also owed his wife $350,000—a loan he collateralized with his half of the couple's 85-acre ranch. McIver never made more than interest payments on the loan, which his wife refinanced with a clause that allowed her to demand full payment with a 90-day notice.

The loan was due in full last December. Oliver testified during the trial that McIver defaulted.

Rickert said the estate has an option to foreclose or let McIver sell the ranch and repay the loan from the proceeds.

“There are so many things we have to work through right now,” he said. “I can't give you all the answers. Nobody knows. We will be working through these issues in the weeks and months ahead.”

But Sugarman suggested the slayer statute may also strip McIver of his ownership of the ranch, which he reclaimed as soon as his wife died. The couple had shared a joint tenancy with rights of survivorship, meaning that McIver immediately became sole owner upon his wife's death—regardless of the terms of her 2006 will.

Instead, the terms of Diane McIver's will and the joint tenant rights of survivorship under which the couple held title to the property would be executed as if Tex McIver died first, Sugarman said.

Prior to and during McIver's trial, prosecutors claimed that Diane McIver and her husband were in a long-running dispute over changes she wanted to make to her 2006 will. At the top of the list was the ranch. Diane McIver wanted to leave it to the couple's godson, and Tex McIver to his son from his first marriage.

Prosecutors executed search warrants for the McIvers' condominium, the home and law office of an attorney who was advising them on proposed changes and a storage unit rented by one of Diane McIver's companies in search of an updated will. They never found one.

Last July, after a grand jury indicted McIver, prosecutors petitioned the Fulton County Probate Court to temporarily remove him as executor of his Diane McIver's estate in proceedings that remain sealed. Oliver was then appointed to replace him.

By then, Tex McIver had already drained his wife's estate of more than $323,000, Oliver testified during trial.

McIver used estate funds to pay his brother more than $3,500, Oliver testified. He also paid his sister's friend, Tammy Johnson, $35,000 for seven months of work inventorying and arranging for the sale of his wife's furniture, clothing and jewelry. He used another $10,000 in estate funds to hire an attorney for Johnson after she was subpoenaed to testify when prosecutors sought to revoke McIver's bond last year.

McIver also used estate funds to pay $6,000 to Jeff Dickerson, a former Atlanta journalist and public relations consultant he hired as a spokesman during the investigation. The money was also supposed to be used as a performance bonus in an attempt to get Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard to drop the charges, Dickerson testified.

McIver also used estate funds to pay $240,000 in legal fees, including at least $70,000 to Stanley Smith Jr., a wills and estate lawyer he hired to represent Diane's estate for $350 an hour. He also paid $100,000 to attorney Kurt Watkins, whom McIver hired to litigate a $975,000 claim against the estate for an outstanding loan U.S. Enterprises made to one of Diane McIver's companies.

McIver did not pay his wife's cremation expenses, which were covered anonymously by a former friend of Diane McIver after her ashes were left at the funeral home for nearly six weeks.

Oliver acknowledged in her testimony that $323,000 in expenses was a substantial amount of money. “Whether or not it was appropriately spent is the proper inquiry,” she said. “I think that most of it was definitely appropriate.”

Oliver also said the estate has not yet paid several hundred thousand dollars in bequests Diane McIver made in her will to a former friend and to a handyman and his family, and her longtime housekeeper.

Oliver said she is being paid $10,000 a month by the estate for the first six months. Anything after that will be billed at an hourly rate.

Oliver said the terms of Diane McIver's 2006 will did not require that the executor do any accounting of his expenses, and she has not done one either.

Oliver said that, since she took over as executor, she has sold several properties Diane McIver owned apart from her husband, jewelry not already sold at auction and Diane's extensive wine collection housed in the couple's Buckhead condominium.

That condominium sold for $604,000, Oliver said, although the will gave McIver use of it as long as he lived. Oliver said she was authorized to sell it without McIver's agreement and pay him a settlement.

“His life estate has a dollar value,” she said. “We have not agreed to date on the value of that life estate. … My value was $190,000. Mr. McIver's counsel was more in the range of $300,000.”

On Tuesday, Rickert said the slayer statute means McIver will no longer be able to claim any remuneration from the condo sale.