Definition
"Their children after them respect" is a phrase of testamentary construction — a string of words appearing in a will or deed that courts have been called upon to interpret in order to determine the nature and extent of the interest conveyed to a named class of beneficiaries. The phrase does not carry a fixed technical meaning established by statute or uniform common law rule. Instead, its legal significance depends entirely on the surrounding context of the instrument in which it appears, the jurisdiction, and the period of drafting.
When encountered in a will, the phrase typically raises the question of whether "their children after them" designates a class of remainder beneficiaries who take after the primary takers (the "them" antecedent), or whether "respect" signals a qualifying or limiting condition on that taking — for example, a direction that the children take in the same proportion, manner, or capacity as their parents took before them. Courts have also read such language as a rough equivalent to a per stirpes distribution clause, directing that children step into the place of their deceased parents and take the parent's share by representation.
The interpretive difficulty is compounded by the word "respect," which sits awkwardly between a pure class gift and a directional instruction. Depending on punctuation, surrounding clauses, and the evident intent of the testator, "respect" may function as: (1) an instruction to honor or observe the prior interest, (2) a positional word meaning "with respect to" or "in respect of," linking the children's interest to the parents' share, or (3) a remnant of archaic drafting that courts must read in its broadest sensible meaning to avoid intestacy or lapse.
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Common Confusion
This phrase is easily confused with formal words of limitation such as "their heirs forever" or "their heirs and assigns," which carry settled technical meanings at common law. Unlike those phrases, "their children after them respect" has no canonized construction. Researchers should also distinguish it from per stirpes clauses proper and from class gift language ("to the children of X"), both of which follow more predictable interpretive rules. The phrase is an example of inartful testamentary language — not a term of art — and must be treated accordingly.
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Why It Matters in Research
This phrase is best understood not as a standalone legal term but as a specimen of contested will language, the kind that generates construction litigation. Its presence in a Rapalje & Lawrence entry signals that American courts in the nineteenth century encountered it with enough frequency to warrant indexing alongside phrases like "their heirs forever" and "their legal representatives" — each of which appears in the same cluster of entries in that dictionary and each of which has its own body of case law.
The research trap here is significant: a researcher who treats "their children after them respect" as a term of art with a fixed meaning will be misled. The phrase has no fixed meaning. What Rapalje & Lawrence offers is not a definition but a pointer to authority — an implicit signal that courts have wrestled with this exact language and that the answer depends on the specific instrument and jurisdiction.
When tracing this phrase in historical sources, researchers should note that the Rapalje & Lawrence entry for this cluster of will-construction phrases does not provide an independent definition for "their children after them respect" — it appears embedded in a sequence of related entries (THEIR ESTATE, THEIR HEIRS FOREVER, THEIR LEGAL REPRESENTATIVES, THEIR REAL ESTATE) without a dedicated citation, suggesting either that the editors treated it as self-explanatory in context or that the supporting authority was understood to flow from the surrounding entries. This is a meaningful gap.
For corpus researchers using Law Mind, the productive strategy is to locate the phrase within the will-construction cluster and then read outward: examine the cases cited under "their heirs forever" (1 Bush (Ky.) 526) and "their legal representatives" (20 Pa. St. 349) for interpretive frameworks that courts applied to similarly ambiguous class and remainder language. The North Carolina authority under "their estate" (2 Hawks (N.C.) 117) and the Hobart citation (Hob. 276) may also illuminate how courts of equity read distributional language in wills of this period.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence includes this phrase within a dense cluster of testamentary construction entries, each paired with a case citation — except, notably, "their children after them respect," which appears in the sequence without its own dedicated authority. This structural anomaly is itself informative: the editors may have regarded the phrase as too context-dependent to assign a governing case, or the entry may be a fragment of a longer phrase that lost its citation in transmission.
The surrounding entries reinforce the interpretive frame. "Their estate" was construed in a North Carolina case (2 Hawks 117) and in Hobart's Reports (Hob. 276), a seventeenth-century English equity authority still cited in American courts through the nineteenth century. "Their heirs forever" carried fee simple implications under standard common law rules. "Their legal representatives" raised questions about whether personal representatives or heirs were intended. Taken together, the cluster reflects the core problem of will construction in this era: imprecise drafting combined with rigid property law rules required courts to strain after testamentary intent while working within formal categories.
Historical dictionaries of this period generally do not address "their children after them respect" as a standalone phrase. The absence is consistent with its nature as litigated language rather than a term of art.
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Jurisdictional Note
Will construction rules varied significantly by jurisdiction in the nineteenth century, particularly on questions of class gifts, remainder interests, and per stirpes versus per capita distribution. A phrase construed one way in Kentucky or Pennsylvania might yield a different result in North Carolina or Virginia. Researchers should not assume that a case construing this or similar language in one state resolves the question in another.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See: Will Construction; Remainder Interests; Words of Limitation; Per Stirpes Distribution
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