No, it is your Will, your wishes. You may gift as you like. Some people own items that are special that they want to give to a person that they know will value the item. If you do not list specific gifts, your personal representative would either divide or sell your personal tangible assets and then split the money according to the terms of your Will.
Simply put, it is something that you own that a person could touch/feel, like jewelry, baseball card collection the stuff in your home. It does not include real estate or other types of property like bank accounts or insurance policies.
If you give everything to an individual and that person dies before you, and you did not name a successor beneficiary, the court has no instructions from you as to what you want to happen to your assets, so the court must then rely on your state’s rules of intestacy. You only name successors for individuals because most charitable institutions do not go out of business, however, even if a specific charity did, the court seeks to honor your wishes and intentions. In regard to a class gift, it would be highly unusual that an entire class dies before the testator. If a member of the class predeceases, their share would go to their child and if they didn’t have children, it would then be distributed among the surviving class members.
These are specific gifts that are made for a certain amount of cash. It is important to be cautious when giving specific cash gifts because these gifts are distributed first. For example, when you write your Will you have $50,000.00. You want most of it to go to your children, but you want to give $2,500 to your favorite charity. After you execute your Will, you need to buy a new car and then decide to vacation in Florida for the winter, and you incur unexpected medical costs, so now your estate only has $5,000.00, your favorite charity would get $2,500, leaving less than $2,500 for your children after legal costs of probating your Will and wrapping up your estate.
Non-tangible gifts are items that have a value but cannot be touched such as stocks, bonds, bitcoin or digital assets such as your social media accounts, documents or intellectual property.
Remaining assets are what is left of your estate after all of your specific gifts (either cash, tangible or no-tangible gifts) are given to your beneficiaries. This can be everything from your home, to your clothes, your artwork or your money.