Definition
The children of one's children — that is, second-generation lineal descendants. In legal contexts, the term appears most frequently in wills, trusts, intestate succession statutes, and class gift instruments, where its precise scope determines who qualifies as a beneficiary.
The central legal question is not what the word means in the abstract but what it includes when used in a dispositive instrument. Courts have divided on whether "grandchildren" encompasses great-grandchildren and more remote descendants, or whether it stops strictly at the second generation.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Plural of grandchild; the children of one's son or daughter.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not separately defined; understood as the natural plural of grandchild, a child of one's child.
The common meaning is stable and intuitive. The legal difficulty is not in understanding the word but in determining its outer boundary when used as a class designation in a will or trust. Ordinary speakers assume the term is self-limiting to the second generation. Courts applying rules of testamentary construction sometimes read it more broadly, and that gap between assumption and legal outcome is where research problems arise.
Common Confusion
GRANDCHILDREN vs. ISSUE vs. DESCENDANTS: These terms are not interchangeable in instruments of disposition. "Issue" and "descendants" are generally terms of art that reach all generations of lineal descent. "Grandchildren" is facially generation-specific but, as noted in Bouvier and the cases it references, courts have occasionally extended it to great-grandchildren when context or necessity supports that reading. A researcher encountering any of these terms in a historical instrument should not assume they carried the same scope or that modern statutory definitions control the older document's meaning.
Why It Matters in Research
The operative legal question for "grandchildren" is almost always one of construction: who falls within the class? This makes the term less a fixed legal concept than a recurring interpretive problem.
Three research traps are common:
First, the split on whether grandchildren includes great-grandchildren is real and unresolved across jurisdictions. Bouvier flags the divergence directly — English equity courts extended the term (2 Eden 194), while New York courts of the same era refused to (3 Barb. Ch. 488; 3 N.Y. 538). Neither result is universal, and modern cases continue to divide on the question when instruments fail to define the class.
Second, historical instruments often used "grandchildren" in contexts where the testator almost certainly meant all descendants. Pre-modern drafting was less precise, and courts filling gaps in older wills applied construction rules that may not reflect the testator's actual intent. When reading historical sources, the apparent clarity of "grandchildren" can conceal a court-constructed meaning.
Third, class gift timing rules intersect with this term in ways that affect who qualifies. When a gift is made to "my grandchildren," questions arise about whether the class closes at the testator's death, at the life tenant's death, or at some other point — and children born after the instrument's execution may or may not be included depending on the jurisdiction and the applicable rule.
Researchers working in intestacy contexts should also note that modern statutes often use defined terms — "descendants," "issue," or "lineal heirs" — rather than "grandchildren," which means the term appears far more often in testamentary instruments than in statutory succession schemes.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's treatment is brief but precise where it counts. The core entry — children of one's children — is uncontroversial. The more useful content is the candid acknowledgment that courts have disagreed about whether great-grandchildren qualify. Bouvier cites authority on both sides without resolving the tension, which accurately reflects the state of the law: there is no universal rule, and the answer depends on jurisdiction, instrument language, and context.
What Bouvier does not address is the class gift dimension — the timing and composition questions that arise when "grandchildren" appears in a trust or will with a future interest structure. For that layer, researchers will need to consult treatises on future interests and the applicable jurisdiction's case law rather than relying on dictionary definitions.
The direction to "See CHILD; CONSTRUCTION" in Bouvier is substantively useful. The CONSTRUCTION entry in that dictionary addresses principles of testamentary interpretation that bear directly on how courts resolve the great-grandchildren question.
Jurisdictional Note
Whether "grandchildren" extends to great-grandchildren is a question of local construction law, not a settled universal rule. English equity and American courts have historically diverged, and American jurisdictions have not uniformly followed each other. Where the instrument is silent and the question is contested, jurisdiction-specific case law must be consulted.