Under UPC anti-lapse, if a predeceased beneficiary has descendants, who takes the lapsed gift when survivorship language is present but there is no other indication of intent?

• A. The descendants of the predeceased beneficiary
• B. The predeceased beneficiary's estate
• C. The rest of the residue
• D. The testator's heirs

Answer: (A)

The rule being tested is the UPC anti-lapse rule. It prevents a gift from failing when the designated beneficiary dies before the testator, provided that beneficiary has descendants who survive the testator. Here, even though there is survivorship language, there’s no indication of an intent to defeat anti-lapse. Since the predeceased beneficiary did have descendants who survive, the lapsed gift is distributed to those descendants, typically per stirpes. The survivorship language governs whether the beneficiary must survive to receive the gift, but it does not override anti-lapse in the absence of a contrary-intent clause. Therefore the descendants of the predeceased beneficiary take the lapsed gift.