OT - old stamps for new?

Only if they are twins. Otherwise, both would be younger but only one would be youngest.

Not even then with your mindless hair splitting.

One will always have been born before the other.

That's mindless hair splitting in this situation.

Even twins legally have younger/older status and will have order and time of births recorded.

Tim

If they are genuinely identical then even birth certificates and original NHS documents won't prove which one is which.

I think you're wrong. IIRC (although I've only had personal experience of this once!) after being born babies are almost immediately fitted with an appropriate ID wrist tag.

Individual birth times are recorded for twin 1 and twin 2. It’s impossible for them to be born or delivered at the same time, hence one is always “older” than the other.

Tim

Do you really believe that they come out side by side? One is always first.

Tim

I wonder if the "If they are genuinely identical then even birth certificates and original NHS documents won't prove which one is which" comment refers to the fact that although one certificate records an earlier birth time that the other, there is no way of saying which certificate relates to which child. It would be so much easier if children were born with unique and indelible bar codes which could be used to relate the child to the certificate ;-) As I understand it, identical twins share the same DNA and fingerprints - they are as identical as that. The only twins I've ever known were non-identical - they must have been because they were opposite sexes - and though they had Indian parents, one was noticeably darker-skinned than the other, though I only knew them at infant school and AIUI skin colour often changes (either lighter or darker) as children grow into adults.

Yes. There have been cases of murder (notably one in France), where they know that one twin has committed the crime, but cannot tell which, so no court case can go ahead.

I used to live opposite non-identical twins (again boy and girl), but also remember attending nursery where there was a pair of identical twins - known as the terrible twins as they were always bullying other kids, throwing things or breaking things.

No, they have unique fingerprints.

But if your youngest sister dies, and her children survive, do you want the money to go to them, or the children of your next youngest sister?

But they don't wear those wrist tags all their lives !. Swapping places to play tricks on their teachers (and others) is par for the course with identical twins.

Not the point. genuinely identical twins can easily interchange 'identities' at various stages of their lives (notably when they are in school). QED actually proving which one popped out first later in life is not easy.

For the second case, it would need to read the children of my youngest surviving sister.

Not at all. That is exactly where lawyers make huge sums of money and the costs eat up inheritances. What you would need to put is exectly who it is to go to and who it should go to if circumstances change.

So "to the children of my sister Alice" or "to the children of my sister Alice, but if she should pre-decease me, to the children of my sister Brenda" depending upon which version you want. Don't leave any room for argument.

This is about the meaning of the wording, rather than about how to write a will. As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, in a real will, the beneficiaries would be named individually, with current addresses, and possibly dates of birth.

In fact it is trivial since fingerprints are unique.

And no one normally needs to prove who is the first born identical twin anyway.