What the heck does “Per Stirpes” mean anyway?

You know your old friend Per Stirpes. You remember – from your Will…right there in Article Four. “My Executor shall distribute the remaining property to my descendants, per stirpes.”

At least once a week someone asks me about per stirpes. Let me see if I can explain it and not sound like a lawyer (no easy task). Okay, here goes- Whenever a distribution is to be made to a person’s descendants per stirpes, the distribution shall be divided into as many equal shares as there are then living children of such person and deceased children of such person who left then living descendants. Each then living child shall receive one equal share and the share of each deceased child shall be divided among such child’s then living descendants in the same manner.

How’s that for non-lawyer talk? Well, I may have fallen a little short of the mark- how about an example? George has two children: Marc and Heather. George dies and leaves his estate to both Marc and Heather, per stirpes. Marc has predeceased George but has two children, Ernie and Haley. Heather takes fifty percent (50%) of George’s estate. The other fifty percent (50%) is divided equally between Marc’s children Ernie and Haley. And that is per stirpes in a nutshell.