The complex scaled hyperspherical adiabatic expansion method is used to compute momentum and energy distributions of the three α particles emerging from the decay of low-lying 12 C resonances. The large distance continuum properties of the wave functions are crucial and must be accurately calculated. We discuss separately decays of natural-parity states: two 0 + , one 1 − , three 2 + , one 3 − , two 4 + , one 6 + , and one of each of unnatural parity 1− . The lowest natural-parity state of each J π decays predominantly sequentially via the 8 Be ground state, whereas other states, including unnatural-parity states, predominantly decay directly to the continuum. We present Dalitz plots and systematic detailed momentum correlations of the emerging α particles.