[WSBAPT] Interpretation of Will provision

[Jon Fritzler]

I would appreciate hearing how others would interpret the following Will provision:

"I give all of my estate to my children, A and B,  and my grandchildren X, Y, and Z, and any children born subsequent hereto, to be divided equally among said children, share and share alike, or to their children by right of representation: PROVIDED, that as any child of mine who has not reached the age of 25 years at the time of my death, such child's share of my estate shall go to my Trustee hereinafter name in TRUST."

Assume that child B predeceased the testator and left no descendants and X, Y, and Z are all adult children of A.

I see two possible interpretations:  A, X, Y, and Z each take 25% because the phrase "I give all of my estate to my children, A and B, and my grandchildren X, Y, and Z" includes the grandchildren, or, A takes 100% because the phrase "to be divided equally among said children share and share alike, or to their children by right of representation" means that A's children are only contingent beneficiaries and since A survived the testator they take nothing.

Thoughts?

Sincerely,
Jon M. Fritzler
Attorney at Law
717 E. 22nd St.
Vancouver, WA 98663
Tel. 360.818.4431
Eml fritzlerlaw at outlook.com<mailto:fritzlerlaw at outlook.com>

CONFIDENTIALITY
The information contained in this email is intended only for the use of the person or entity to whom it is addressed. This email may contain confidential or privileged information. If you are not the person whose name appears above, or the person responsible for delivering the email to the addressee, you are hereby notified that reading, using, copying, distributing or disseminating this communication is strictly prohibited. If you think that you have received this email message in error, please email the sender at fritzlerlaw at outlook.com<mailto:fritzlerlaw at outlook.com>. Thank you.

ATTORNEY-CLIENT PRIVILEGE
The security of communications via the Internet cannot be guaranteed, especially without the use of encryption. In order to protect the attorney-client privilege, please do not use email to transmit confidential or sensitive information, or ask our office to email confidential or sensitive information to you.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/wsbapt/attachments/20230501/72328a5c/attachment.html>