Legal Question in Wills and Trusts in Illinois

Re: Grandchildren per stirpes

Per stirpes means by the stripe and means that descendants take a deceased person's share.

In this case, it was left to his children's descendants. I would interpret this that 1. it goes to descendants of the children (smart, huh) and 2. he is describing how it shall be divided.

And dealing with the latter, I would interpret it to mean that a share is created for each child (which is the way the income was treated), and then divided among the child's descendants.

Assume 3 children, with 1, 2, and 3 children each. There would be three shares. The child of the first would get his entire share. The children of the second would divide their parent's share, getting 1/6 each. The children of the third would get 1/9 each. If a grandchild is deceased his/her descendants would take that share on the same formula.

You apparently would like to divide into 6 shares -- equally per grandchild -- and interpret per stirpes as meaning only what happens if a grandchild is deceased. I appreciate your wish, but that's not my itnerpretation. The appropriate language for your approach would be "to my grandchildren equally, the surviving descendants of a deceased grandchild to take their ancestor's share per stirpes". That language would make it clearer that the division is at the grandchild's level, but I think this language is at the child's level.

I could use this to emphasize the need for a lawyer in drafting, but this was probably drafted by a lawyer, and this is presumably your grandfather's intent. Drafting does require precision in language.