PrepTest 115

Incorrect. This answer is very tempting! However, it's too strong to be the correct answer. Even if some people do want their estate going to people they don't know, they still might want to have a will so it doesn't go to relatives they don't know. For example, one could want to donate their estate to the children at a certain orphanage instead of close friends or distant relatives, and that person should have a will saying as much.

Incorrect. The stimulus doesn't discuss who does or doesn't deserve an inheritance, so this answer is out of scope.

Incorrect. The justness of the laws is out of scope—it just matters what should be done under the current ones.

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Argument

Valid or Flawed:
Flawed

Question Type:
Strengthen with Necessary Premise

Stimulus Summary:
If you die without a will, distant relatives will get your money instead of friends, so you should have a will.

Answer Anticipation:
This argument makes a recommendation in the conclusion—that you should have a will.

Whenever an argument makes a recommendation, it needs to establish what criteria will be used to decide on the best course of action, and then it needs to show that the recommended action best meets that criteria.

Here, there's no discussion of why one should have a will—it's missing the criteria. What is established is that dying without a will will result in distant relatives having a better claim to one's estate than their friends.

In order for that to be a good reason to have a will, then it must be assumed that one would prefer their estate go to good friends rather than distant relatives whom one has never met. Let's find an answer establishing that preference!

Answer Explanation:
This answer doesn't establish the preference that we anticipated, but it does deal with preferences. If we negate this answer—people are indifferent about how their estates are distributed—then the argument falls apart. If people don't care where their stuff goes, then there's no reason that they should have a will declaring it. This answer is more generic than we anticipated, but that's not a problem for Strengthen with Necessary Premise questions, as long as it needs to be true for the argument to hold.

Key Takeaway:
For Strengthen with Necessary Premise questions, it's sometimes hard to anticipate the answers that are very weak/abstract/generic but that are necessary for the argument to hold. When you have a more specific anticipation, consider any answer choice that touches on the same issues. Here, our anticipation was about a specific preference, and the answer we ended up choosing spoke much more generically about preferences.

Incorrect. This answer is directly contradicted by the stimulus, so it's not necessary for it to hold.