Wills, trusts and estates: Wills: Lapse and anti-lapse + Ademption by extinction + Abatement of debts and legacies + Ademption by satisfaction + Acts of independent significance + Elective share

Lapse and anti-lapse are complementary concepts under the US law of wills, which address the disposition of property that is willed to someone who dies before the testator (the writer of the will).

Ademption, or ademption by extinction, is a common law doctrine used in the law of wills to determine what happens when property bequeathed under a will is no longer in the testator's estate at the time of the testator's death. For a devise (bequest) of a specific item of property (a specific gift), such property is considered adeemed, and the gift fails. For example, if a will bequeathed the testator's car to a specific beneficiary, but the testator owned no car at the time of his or her death, the gift would be adeemed and the aforementioned beneficiary would receive no gift at all.

General bequests or general gifts - gifts of cash amounts - are never adeemed. If the cash in the testator's estate is not sufficient to satisfy the gift, then other assets in the residuary estate will need to be sold to raise the necessary cash.

Abatement of debts and legacies is a common law doctrine of wills that holds that when the equitable assets of a deceased person are not sufficient to satisfy fully all the creditors, their debts must abate proportionately, and they must accept a dividend.

In the case of legacies when the funds or assets out of which they are payable are not sufficient to pay them in full, the legacies abate in proportion, unless there is a priority given specially to any particular legacy. Annuities are also subject to the same rule as general legacies.

Ademption by satisfaction, also known as satisfaction of legacies, is a common law doctrine that determines the disposition of property under a will when the testator has made lifetime gifts to beneficiaries named in the will. Under the doctrine, a gift that the maker of the will (the testator) gives during his lifetime to a named beneficiary of the will is treated as an advance payment of that beneficiary's inheritance. If the probate court determines that the testator intended the lifetime gift to satisfy a bequest under the will, the amount of the lifetime gift is deducted from the amount that the beneficiary would have received under the will.

The doctrine of acts of independent significance at common law permits a testator to effectively change the disposition of his property without changing a will, if acts or events changing the disposition have some significance beyond avoiding the requirements of the will.

The doctrine is frequently applied under the following two circumstances:

1. The testator devises assets to a class of beneficiaries where the testator controls membership. For example, Joey leaves the contents of his bank account "to my employees." If Joey then fires some of the old employees and hires new ones, the new employees will inherit the contents of the bank account under this provision.

An elective share is a term used in American law relating to inheritance, which describes a proportion of an estate which the surviving spouse of the deceased may claim in place of what they were left in the decedent's will. It may also be called a widow's share, statutory share, election against the will, or forced share.