If you’ve seen “stripes” written in a will, it’s almost certainly a misspelling of per stirpes, a Latin phrase meaning “by branch.” Per stirpes is a rule for dividing an estate when one of your beneficiaries dies before you do: instead of that person’s share being redistributed to your other beneficiaries, it passes down to their own children. So what “stripes” means in a will is simply this — the drafter intended per stirpes, and the share of any deceased beneficiary should flow down their family line rather than being absorbed by the surviving beneficiaries.1Cornell Law School. Per Stirpes
The misspelling is common enough that probate attorneys see it regularly. The meaning behind it, though, is worth understanding carefully, because the difference between per stirpes and the alternatives can decide whether grandchildren inherit anything at all.
How Per Stirpes Divides an Estate
Per stirpes translates roughly to “by roots” or “by the branch.” Each of your children heads a branch of the family tree. If a child has died before you, that branch isn’t erased — their share drops down to their own descendants.1Cornell Law School. Per Stirpes
Say you have three children: Alice, Bob, and Carol. Your will divides your estate equally among them, per stirpes. Alice and Carol are living when you die. Bob died two years earlier and left two children of his own.
Alice takes one-third. Carol takes one-third. Bob’s one-third splits between his two children, who each receive one-sixth of the estate. Bob’s branch gets its full share; his kids simply step into his place.1Cornell Law School. Per Stirpes
If Bob’s daughter had also died before you, leaving a child of her own, Bob’s one-third would still first split in half. His surviving son takes one-sixth, and his deceased daughter’s one-sixth passes to her child, your great-grandchild. The subdivision keeps going until it reaches someone alive to receive it.
The Uniform Probate Code codifies this at Section 2-709. The estate is divided into as many equal shares as there are surviving children plus deceased children who left descendants. Each living child takes a share, and each deceased child’s share is subdivided the same way among their descendants, repeating down through the generations.2Legal Information Institute. Pure Per Stirpes
When a Branch Dies Out
Per stirpes only moves a share down a branch if that branch has someone alive to receive it. If Bob had died childless, his branch is treated as if it never existed. His one-third gets redistributed among the remaining branches, so Alice and Carol would each receive half the estate rather than one-third. A deceased child with no surviving descendants simply drops out of the calculation.
Who Counts as a Descendant
Per stirpes sends a share to the deceased beneficiary’s descendants, and that word has a narrower legal meaning than many people assume. Descendants means children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and so on down the bloodline. It does not include a deceased beneficiary’s spouse.
This is one of the most common misreadings of a per stirpes clause. People assume “to my children, per stirpes” quietly provides for a child’s surviving husband or wife. It does not. A deceased beneficiary’s spouse receives nothing under per stirpes unless they are named separately somewhere else in the will.
Adopted children are generally treated as full descendants of their adoptive parents. Under the UPC and most state laws, adoption creates a complete parent-child relationship for inheritance purposes, so an adopted grandchild steps into line like any biological grandchild. Stepchildren are typically not descendants unless they were formally adopted. If your son’s stepchild was raised in his home but never legally adopted, that stepchild does not inherit under a per stirpes clause.
Per Stirpes vs. Per Capita vs. Per Capita at Each Generation
Per stirpes is one of three common ways to distribute an estate among descendants. The methods only produce different outcomes when a beneficiary has died before the person who wrote the will, but when that happens, the differences can be dramatic.
Per Capita
Per capita means “by the head.” Under a strict per capita distribution, every living descendant receives an equal share regardless of which branch they belong to. Go back to the earlier example: Alice and Carol are living, Bob is deceased, and Bob has two children. Under strict per capita, the estate splits four ways, with Alice, Carol, and each of Bob’s two children taking one-fourth. Under per stirpes, Alice and Carol take a third each and Bob’s children split a third between them.
Per capita treats every surviving family member as an equal. Per stirpes keeps each branch’s original proportional share intact.
Per Capita at Each Generation
This method, which the UPC uses as its default for distribution “by representation,” sits between the other two. It begins the way per stirpes does, by dividing shares at the first generation with any living members. Each living person at that level takes a share. The difference comes next: the shares that would have gone to deceased members of that generation are pooled together and divided equally among all the surviving descendants of the next generation, no matter which branch they come from.
Consider a different scenario. You have three children, Alice, Bob, and Carol. Both Bob and Carol die before you. Bob leaves one child; Carol leaves three. Under per stirpes, Bob’s one-third goes to his only child, who takes a full one-third of the estate. Carol’s one-third splits among her three children, who each take one-ninth. The grandchildren in Carol’s branch end up with far less per head than the grandchild in Bob’s branch. Under per capita at each generation, the two deceased children’s shares combine into a two-thirds pool, which splits equally among all four grandchildren, giving each one-sixth.
States vary on which method applies as a default when a will is silent or unclear. Some use traditional per stirpes; others use per capita at each generation. That variation is one reason to spell out the method you want.
Drafting Language That Works and Language That Backfires
Even attorneys sometimes misuse per stirpes language. The errors tend to fall into a handful of recognizable patterns.
- Using it with a named individual. Writing “to my son Peter, per stirpes” treats per stirpes as shorthand for “and if he’s dead, to his kids.” Per stirpes is not a contingent beneficiary designation. It’s a method for dividing shares among a class of descendants. The correct form is “to my descendants, per stirpes.”
- Pairing it with the wrong class. Writing “to my brothers and sisters, per stirpes” doesn’t work, because siblings aren’t your descendants. The correct version would be “to my mother’s descendants, per stirpes,” which captures siblings and their children.
- Adding contradictory qualifiers. Writing “to my then-living descendants, per stirpes” creates a conflict, because per stirpes assumes some descendants will be deceased. “Then-living” could be read to cut out exactly the deceased beneficiaries whose shares are supposed to flow down.
- Mixing instructions. “To my children in equal shares, per stirpes” invites a fight between the living children and a predeceased child’s kids. Does “in equal shares” mean only among the survivors, or does per stirpes override that and push a share down to the grandchildren? A court may have to resolve it, and the estate pays for the dispute.
The cleanest formulation is “to [person’s] descendants, per stirpes.” The word “descendants” (or the older term “issue”) needs to appear, and the clause shouldn’t be loaded with qualifiers that pull against how per stirpes actually operates. A will that says “stripes” is salvageable only through court interpretation, and the cost of that interpretation comes out of what you leave behind. Fixing the spelling, and choosing the distribution method deliberately, keeps the decision in your hands rather than a judge’s.