The descendants of a branch of a family.

Family or generation; describes the way a bequest is to be divided among a person's issue. Most people want bequests to their children to be divided equally among the children. A per stirpes distribution does this, and it also governs what happens if any child has died. If a child has died, his (or her) share is divided among his issue if he has any issue. For example, presume that you have three children and that your will provides for a bequest to your children per stirpes. If all three children survive you, each would get one third of the property. If, however, one has died, his one third share would be divided among his children if he had any, or if he had no living issue his one third share would pass to his two siblings

Latin] [1] a family or branch of family; [2] in law, the person from whom everyone in a family is descended