Do Grandchildren Inherit if Their Parent Has Died?

The intestacy rules include a built-in substitution mechanism: if a child of the deceased has already died, but left children of their own, those grandchildren step into their parent's place and inherit the share their parent would have received, divided equally among them if there is more than one. This happens automatically under the statutory rules, without any need for a will.

This means that, under intestacy at least, grandchildren from a child who died before you are not overlooked; they take their parent's share as a matter of law. The complication comes when there is a will, because a will overrides intestacy, and a will does not automatically include this same substitution unless it is specifically worded to do so.

'Per stirpes' is a Latin phrase meaning 'by branches', used in wills to describe a gift that passes down a family line, so that if a named beneficiary has died before you, their share passes to their own children in equal shares, rather than being lost or redistributed among your other beneficiaries. The opposite approach, sometimes called 'per capita', treats surviving beneficiaries in the relevant generation equally, without regard to which original branch of the family they come from.

If your will simply says 'to my children in equal shares' without any substitution wording, and one of your children has died before you leaving children of their own, that deceased child's intended share does not automatically pass to their children. Depending on how the will is drafted, it may instead be divided among your other surviving children, effectively cutting out that branch of grandchildren entirely, which is very often not what the person making the will actually wanted.

This issue becomes especially sensitive in blended families where an adult child from a first relationship has died. If your will was drafted (or your intestacy would apply) without substitution wording, and your remaining beneficiaries include a stepchild, a second spouse, or children from a different relationship, the practical effect can be that grandchildren from your deceased child's side are cut out entirely, while other family members benefit from a share that was never meant for them.

This is rarely anyone's deliberate intention. It usually happens because the will was written some years earlier, before the death occurred, and was never reviewed afterwards. If an adult child has died, reviewing your will promptly to check exactly how their share is now dealt with is one of the most important pieces of housekeeping you can do.

Many wills include a survivorship clause requiring a beneficiary to survive the person making the will by a set period, commonly 28 days, before they inherit. This is separate from the per stirpes question but interacts with it: if a child dies within the survivorship window relative to a parent's death (relevant mainly where deaths occur close together), the substitution wording still needs to say clearly what happens to that share, and whether grandchildren inherit in that specific scenario too.

Because these clauses interact, a will dealing with multiple generations in a blended family benefits from being checked as a whole, rather than assuming each clause works independently.

Adding clear per stirpes substitution wording for your children's shares is a standard, well-understood piece of drafting that a good online will template can include, and it is worth checking explicitly that any will you make, or already have, addresses this point rather than assuming it does.

Where the situation is more layered, for example you want grandchildren from a deceased child to receive their inheritance later through a trust rather than outright (perhaps because they are still young), or you are trying to balance grandchildren's interests against a surviving spouse's life interest in the family home, that moves into territory where a solicitor should be involved.