Opinion ID: 837289
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: First and Second Clauses Together

Text: When the first and second clauses are read together, paragraph A entitles a sibling who survived testator to recover a share of the estate and creates a substitute devise for any sibling who did not survive testator, to which the survivor or survivors of the predeceased sibling are entitled. The devise created for both a surviving sibling and a predeceased sibling's survivors must be allocated from within the 50 percent portion distributed under paragraph A. This allocation is defined by the phrase share and share alike, which, as explained earlier, divides the estate among a group of people who stand as part of a similar class. Dividing the 50 percent portion by the total number of testator's siblings (who are in equal relation to testator and in the class preceding) creates eight equal shares. The two brothers who survived testator are each entitled to their own share. The surviving descendants of each predeceased sibling take the share that would have gone to the predeceased sibling had he or she survived testator. The share for each group of surviving descendants is disbursed according to inheritance, because testator's will provides no guidance for how the survivor or survivors should receive the share. See In re Horrie's Estate, 365 Mich. 448, 453-454, 113 N.W.2d 793 (1962). Under Michigan's inheritance scheme, the predeceased sibling's descendants take by representation. [9] MCL 700.2103(a). MCL 700.2106(1) provides the framework by which the predeceased sibling's share should be divided among the sibling's descendants by representation: [T]he estate or part of the estate is divided into as many equal shares as the total of the surviving descendants in the generation nearest to the decedent that contains 1 or more surviving descendants and the deceased descendants in the same generation who left surviving descendants, if any. Each surviving descendant in the nearest generation is allocated 1 share. The remaining shares, if any, are combined and then divided in the same manner among the surviving descendants of the deceased descendants as if the surviving descendants who were allocated a share and their surviving descendants had predeceased the decedent. Accordingly, the predeceased sibling's share is further divided into shares based on the sibling's number of children, assuming at least one child is still alive. [10] The children who survived the sibling are each entitled to one share. For the children who predeceased the sibling, their shares are combined and divided in the same manner among the predeceased children's surviving descendants (the predeceased sibling's grandchildren). The descendants of the surviving children are not included in this division, nor are they entitled to any share. The potential for survivors to be entitled to distribution by representation explains testator's placement of share and share alike after the class defined in the first clause, brother[s] and sisters that survive me. Had testator placed share and share alike after the second clause, survivor or survivors thereof, the specified division would have been more reasonably interpreted as being among testator's siblings and testator's predeceased siblings' descendants. Because the predeceased sibling's descendants, who are substitute beneficiaries for the predeceased siblings, could include the living children and grandchildren of any predeceased sibling, to include those descendants in calculating the initial division of the 50 percent portion of the estate would possibly create a division of shares among a large number of people. Such a division would diminish the property to which each living sibling would be entitled, apparently arbitrarily and quite possibly in a manner not intended by testator, and allow persons standing in different degrees of relation to testator to recover an equivalent amount. This result is avoided by testator's placement of share and share alike after the first clause, where it is reasonably interpreted to apply to a division among the preceding class. The interpretation set forth above, contrary to the plurality's assertion, would not permit a gift to the predeceased siblings of the testator, a group that was specifically excluded by the plain language of the will. Ante at 4. Rather, it recognizes that the first clause excludes a predeceased sibling and that such exclusion creates a potential void for the share allocated to that sibling. However, the second clause fills that void by providing an alternative beneficiary. This alternative distribution does not permit a gift to the predeceased sibling but allows the descendants of the predeceased sibling to recover under the will. That is, each of testator's siblings is allocated a share of 50 percent of the estate under paragraph A. If the sibling was alive at the time of testator's death, then that sibling takes his or her respective share. If the sibling has predeceased testator, then the share allocated for that sibling, rather than going to the sibling, goes to the sibling's descendants.