Also known as: predeceases · predeceased · predeceasing
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
The condition of dying before another individual designated in a donative instrument or statute. This status triggers substitutional rules in intestacy and will construction that redirect property to the predeceased person's descendants or other designated takers.
Pedro Pacheco executed a will devising assets to the trustee of a trust created in his sister's will. The sister had already died before Pedro executed his own will. The devise remains valid and the assets pass into the identified trust rather than failing for lack of a trustee.
Penelope Price and her husband held brokerage accounts as joint tenants. Penelope died first. The accounts are valued immediately before her death for purposes of calculating her surviving spouse's elective share, without treating the husband as having predeceased her.
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Patrick Phan inherited from his mother but filed a timely disclaimer. The disclaimer treats him as having predeceased his mother, so the inheritance passes directly to his daughter and creditors cannot reach the assets.
Pierre Poulin participated in an ERISA pension plan. His first wife died before him. The plan's surviving-spouse annuity provisions do not apply to the first wife, leaving the benefits available for the second spouse under the statutory framework.
Prism Analytics stock was placed in trust for named beneficiaries. One beneficiary died before the trust termination date. The trust instrument directed that the deceased beneficiary's interest pass to his surviving issue rather than reverting to the settlor.
Pavel Petrov and his wife owned real property as tenants by the entirety. The wife died first. The IRS lien against the husband could not attach to the wife's former interest because the right of survivorship had already passed full title to the husband.
A devisee who predeceases the testator causes the gift to lapse unless the antilapse statute substitutes the devisee's descendants. The statute applies only when the will does not expressly provide an alternative disposition for the failure to survive.
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The individual is treated as having died before the decedent, removing that person from the distribution scheme and redirecting the share to the next eligible takers under the applicable intestacy statute.
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Yes. A valid disclaimer creates the legal fiction that the disclaimant predeceased the decedent, passing the interest to the next taker and shielding the property from the disclaimant's creditors.
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…payment. § 1055(b)(1)(C). ERISA's solicitude for the economic security of surviving spouses would be undermined by allowing a predeceasing spouse's heirs and legatees to have a community property interest in the survivor's annuity. Even a plan participant cannot defeat a nonparticipant surviving spouse's statutory entitlement…