Reported / Citable
Background
Ya-Ching Tung created a revocable trust in 2011, leaving real property and bank accounts to her three adult children. Her oldest son, Lin-Chuan, was to receive the Santa Monica family home and a share of the bank accounts. The trust contained a “survivor provision” stating that if any named person “fails to survive” Tung by 30 days, that person “shall be considered to have predeceased the settlor.” No other provisions addressed what would happen to a beneficiary’s share if that person predeceased Tung.
Lin-Chuan died in July 2016 — nearly three years before Tung died in May 2019. Lin-Chuan was survived by his three adult children, Nicholas, Savannah, and Joyce Yeh (the Yeh children). After Tung’s death, her surviving daughter Lillian Gaecke petitioned the Los Angeles probate court as successor trustee, arguing that the transfer to Lin-Chuan had “lapsed” because he predeceased Tung, and that his share should pass by intestacy — effectively cutting out the Yeh children and funneling the assets to Gaecke as the sole surviving child.
The probate court granted Gaecke’s motion for summary adjudication, concluding that the 30-day survivorship clause expressed a “contrary intention” under Probate Code section 21110, subdivision (b), overriding California’s antilapse statute and preventing Lin-Chuan’s children from inheriting in his place. The Yeh children appealed.
The Court’s Holding
The Second Appellate District reversed, holding that the Tung Trust’s 30-day survivorship clause was not a sufficient “contrary intention” to override California’s antilapse statute (Probate Code § 21110). The court explained that the antilapse statute — which provides that a predeceased beneficiary’s issue (descendants) step into the beneficiary’s shoes and receive the gift — applies by default unless the trust clearly expresses an intent to the contrary.
Under section 21110, subdivision (b), a “contrary intention” can be expressed by a provision requiring that the transferee “survive the transferor or survive for a specified period of time.” The court distinguished the Tung Trust’s language: the survivor clause merely defined when a person would be treated as having predeceased Tung — it said nothing about what happens to the gift if that person is so treated. It imposed a definitional rule, not a survival condition on entitlement to inherit. The trust never said that if Lin-Chuan predeceased Tung, his children would not take; in the absence of such clear contrary language, the antilapse default applied.
The court also found the trust’s other provisions instructive. The additions clause elsewhere in the trust contemplated distributions to a beneficiary’s “then-living issue,” signaling Tung’s awareness of how to direct gifts toward descendants. And the no-contest clause — which explicitly cut out any beneficiary “as if” they had predeceased — showed that when Tung wanted to eliminate a beneficiary’s entire line, she said so expressly. The probate court’s order was reversed and the case remanded to deny the summary adjudication.
Key Takeaways
- A boilerplate 30-day survivorship clause — common in many trust forms — does not automatically override California’s antilapse statute; something more is required to express a “contrary intention” under Probate Code § 21110(b).
- Trust drafters who want to prevent a predeceased beneficiary’s children from inheriting must say so explicitly: the trust must condition the gift on survival and address what happens to the share if the condition is not met.
- Courts will read the entire trust instrument, not just isolated provisions, to determine the settlor’s intent — other provisions (like additions clauses and no-contest clauses) can be evidence of what explicit disinheritance language looks like when the settlor intended it.
- The antilapse statute is a default rule that courts apply broadly to avoid unintended disinheritance; only clear, express language in the trust will override it.
- California practitioners should review trust survivorship clauses for clients where there is any possibility of a beneficiary predeceasing the settlor, especially where grandchildren or other multi-generation interests are at stake.
Why It Matters
Estate planning attorneys in California regularly include 30-day survivorship clauses in trust templates, often without thinking through the antilapse implications. This decision clarifies that such clauses — unless they also contain explicit alternative-disposition or disinheritance language — will not override the antilapse statute. That means a predeceased beneficiary’s children will typically inherit in that beneficiary’s place, regardless of the survivorship clause, unless the trust expressly and clearly provides otherwise.
For families, the stakes are high: the difference between the antilapse statute applying and not applying can be the difference between grandchildren inheriting a family home or being completely disinherited in favor of a surviving aunt or uncle. Practitioners who use boilerplate survivorship language should revisit their standard forms in light of this decision, and clients with existing trusts may want to review whether their documents reflect their actual intent regarding multi-generational distributions.