Definition
Those who have issued from a person through the direct descending line of blood relation — including children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and all subsequent generations to the remotest degree. The term encompasses every person who traces biological or legally recognized lineage downward from a common ancestor.
In the context of wills, trusts, and intestate succession, "descendants" identifies the class of takers who inherit through lineal descent rather than through collateral relationship. It is a term of limitation as much as of description: a gift "to my descendants" opens or closes a class of beneficiaries based on who is alive at the time of distribution.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Plural of descendant — persons descended from a particular ancestor.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): One descended; a person proceeding from an ancestor in any degree; offspring.
The gap between common and legal meaning is narrow but consequential in context. Ordinary usage treats "descendants" as a factual biological description. Legal usage treats it as a term of art that can include or exclude adopted children, children born outside marriage, and stepchildren depending on the governing instrument, applicable statute, and jurisdiction. A researcher who reads "descendants" in a will or trust as a simple biological term may misread the class entirely.
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Common Confusion
DESCENDANTS vs. HEIRS: These terms are frequently conflated but carry different legal freight. "Heirs" is the broader category — it includes collateral relatives (siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles) who may inherit in the absence of descendants. "Descendants" is always lineal: downward only. A gift "to my heirs" and a gift "to my descendants" produce different results when the decedent leaves no children but is survived by a sibling.
DESCENDANTS vs. ISSUE: Historically treated as synonyms in many instruments and statutes, but some jurisdictions and some courts have treated "issue" as the narrower or more technical term, while "descendants" has become the preferred modern word in drafting. Researchers working in older materials should not assume identity of meaning without checking the local rule of construction.
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Why It Matters in Research
The term is a moving target across time and jurisdiction in ways that can invalidate an otherwise correct reading of a historical document.
Illegitimate children: Pre-20th-century instruments and many older statutes excluded children born outside marriage from the class of "descendants" entirely. Landmark constitutional developments changed this in American law, but the change was not uniform or simultaneous. A will drafted in 1880 construed under 1880 law may exclude a child that would be included under modern construction.
Adopted children: Whether adopted persons qualify as "descendants" for purposes of a given instrument depends on the date of adoption, the date of the instrument, the date of death, and the governing statute. Many older instruments and older courts excluded adoptees. Modern statutes generally include them but with important exceptions, particularly for class gifts made by someone other than the adoptive parent.
Per stirpes vs. per capita: The word "descendants" does not itself resolve how a class takes. It identifies who is in the class; the method of distribution — per stirpes, per capita with representation, per capita at each generation — requires a separate determination from the instrument or applicable intestacy statute.
Historical sources and the remoteness problem: Bouvier correctly notes that descendants extend "to the remotest degree," but this formulation raises a trap in older trust instruments. Gifts to "descendants" in perpetuity ran into rule-against-perpetuities problems. Researchers reading older trust materials should track whether the drafter limited "descendants" to a specific number of generations to satisfy the rule, or whether the instrument may be void in part.
Class gifts: When "descendants" defines a class gift, the class typically closes at the time of distribution. Afterborn descendants can enter an open class; researchers tracing the composition of a beneficiary class must determine when closing occurred.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's treatment is characteristically clean and accurate on the core meaning: descendants are those issuing from an individual through the direct descending line, contrasted with ascendants who proceed upward. Bouvier flags the asymmetry between the number of possible ascendants and descendants — a person has a fixed, doubling number of ascendants (2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great-grandparents) but an indefinite and potentially unlimited number of descendants. This asymmetry matters when researching class gift problems: the ascendant class is always finite; the descendant class is theoretically unbounded.
What Bouvier does not address — predictably for his era — is the status of illegitimate children or adoptees within the class, the construction problems that arise in class gifts, or the interaction with the rule against perpetuities. Researchers relying on Bouvier alone for a modern instrument will find the basic definition sound but will miss the doctrinal complexity that accumulated through the 19th and 20th centuries.
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Jurisdictional Note
American intestacy and trust statutes have generally modernized the definition of "descendants" to include adopted children and, in most states, children of unmarried parents. However, rules of construction for older instruments often apply the law in force at the time of execution or the time of the testator's death, not the law in force at the time of research. Civil law jurisdictions (notably Louisiana) use distinct terminology and classification systems for lineal descent that do not map cleanly onto common law usage.
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