Also known as: ancestors · progenitor · forebear
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
An individual from whom another person is descended by blood or adoption. In intestate succession and class gifts the ancestor's death fixes the distribution date and determines the shares taken by living descendants under applicable rules of representation.
Audrey Ashton left a trust directing a remainder to her descendants without specifying shares. When the trust terminated, her son Austin was alive and her daughter had predeceased leaving two children. The trustee divided the property into two equal shares under intestate succession rules as if Audrey had died at termination, allocating one share to Austin and one share divided between the grandchildren.
Alexis Archer's will devised property to her issue. At distribution her son was alive and her deceased daughter left three grandchildren. The court treated issue as including all generations descending from Alexis, so the grandchildren took the share their mother would have received.
Alfred Ashford's trust directed distribution by representation to his descendants. At termination his daughter Amber survived and his son had predeceased leaving two children. The trustee created two shares at the first generation, giving one to Amber and dividing the second equally between the two grandchildren.
Alexandra Armstrong's will called for per stirpes distribution to her descendants. Her two children survived and a third child had predeceased leaving one grandchild. The estate was divided into three shares with each surviving child taking one share outright and the grandchild taking the third share.
Austin Abbott died intestate survived by his niece Amber, daughter of his full sister, and his nephew Alfred, son of his half-brother. The court awarded each an equal share of the estate because the statute directs heirs to inherit without regard to how many common ancestors they share with the decedent in the same generation.
After the death of his father, the son of an unmarried woman sought to inherit from his paternal grandfather's estate. The court recognized the child as an heir through his father under the rule that an illegitimate child inherits from maternal ancestors and from any person from whom the mother might have inherited.
Deta Mona Trimble is the illegitimate daughter of Jessie Trimble and Sherman Gordon. Trimble and Gordon lived together in Chicago with Deta Mona from 1970 until Gordon died in 1974 as the victim of a homicide. On January 2, 1973, the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, entered a paternity order finding Gordon to be the father of Deta Mona and ordering him to pay fifteen dollars per week for her support. Gordon thereafter supported Deta Mona in accordance with the paternity order and openly acknowledged her as his child. Gordon died intestate at the age of twenty-eight, leaving an estate consisting only of a 1974 Plymouth automobile worth approximately twenty-five hundred dollars. Shortly after Gordon's death, Trimble, as the mother and next friend of Deta Mona, filed a petition for letters of administration, determination of heirship, and declaratory relief in the Probate Division of the Circuit Court of Cook County. That court entered an order determining heirship, identifying as the only heirs of Gordon his father Joseph Gordon, his mother Ethel King, and his brother, two sisters, and a half brother. The Circuit Court excluded Deta Mona on the authority of section twelve of the Illinois Probate Act. The Illinois Supreme Court affirmed the decision of the Circuit Court on the authority of its earlier decision in In re Estate of Karas. The United States Supreme Court noted probable jurisdiction to consider the arguments that section twelve violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by invidiously discriminating on the basis of illegitimacy and sex.
View caseThe property is distributed among living class members at the time the interest takes effect in possession, in the shares they would receive if the designated ancestor had then died intestate owning the property.
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The term includes the designated ancestor's descendants of the first and more remote generations unless the instrument shows a contrary intention.
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The property is divided into equal shares equal to the number of surviving descendants in the nearest generation plus deceased descendants in that generation who left surviving descendants, with each surviving descendant in the nearest generation receiving one share.
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Per stirpes divides the property into shares equal to the number of surviving children of the ancestor plus deceased children who left surviving descendants, with each surviving child's share allocated outright and each deceased child's share subdivided at succeeding generations.
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No. An heir inherits without regard to how many common ancestors in the same generation the heir shares with the decedent.
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…for invasion of private right under the pretext of the public good, which had no warrant in the laws or practices of our ancestors.” 188 U. S., at 470. : Each of the cases cited by the Court for the proposition that legislation which severely affects some landowners but not others does not effect a “taking”…