Defining Descendants – Who Inherits Under Your Client’s Wills and Trusts?

This article was originally posted on Steve Leimberg’s Business Entities Email Newsletter Archive Message #3079.

Who a client names as their beneficiaries is fundamental to carrying out their dispositive wishes. How their estate planning instruments define, or in the absence of a definition, the state default rule, terms such as ‘child,’ ‘‘descendant,’ and ‘issue,’ is critical to assure that the individuals a client wants included are included as beneficiaries, and those whom they don’t want included are not. How modern medical reproductive techniques, social mores, adoption, nonmarital children, and other considerations are addressed in planning are complex and evolving considerations.

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