Glossary of Will Terms

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Administration (or admon) – see Letters of Administration.

Annuity – a fixed amount of money paid every year, generated from an investment.

Appurtenance (or appurts) – belonging to a property. This may be a physical thing, such as gardens and yards, or a right, such as to fish in the river.

Beneficiary – someone who benefits from a will.

Bequest – something left to someone in a will.

Codicil – a written amendment to a will. After making a will, circumstances often change slightly. For example, someone named in the will may have died, or the person may remember an asset he or she forgot to list in the original will. The bulk of the will remains unchanged, so instead of rewriting, the person just makes an amendment. One will can have any number of codicils.

Estate – assets held in the sole name of the dead person. Personal estate refers to property other than real estate (land and buildings) owned by an individual.

Executor (male) or executrix (female) – the person appointed to deal with someone’s affairs after they have died. Often, the widow, adult children or other relatives were named in the will as the executors.

Freehold – legal ownership of land or a building for an unlimited time.

Intestacy – where a person died intestate (without leaving a will).

Intestate – dying without a will. There are laws governing how assets are distributed.

Last will and testament – wills typically start with “this my last will and testament”. Will and testament have slightly different means (see separate entries).

Letters of administration (admons) – where someone died intestate, or with no executors, the court will appoint someone to administer the estate, through admons.

Memorandum – a will starting with this means that it was a spoken (nuncupative) will that may have been spoken on a person’s deathbed.

Messuage – a property.

Nuncupative wills – oral wills. When someone knew that they were dying, it often spurred them on to making a will. However, many people were illiterate, and it might be difficult to organise a written will at short notice. To overcome this, it was legal for a dying person to orally declare his or her wishes to witnesses in the form of a nuncupative or nunc will. Not surprisingly, these resulted in disputes. Nunc wills were made invalid in 1837, except for those on active military service. These wills often start with “memorandum” rather than “this is the last will and testament.”

PCC – Prerogative Court of Canterbury, in fact based in London. This was the most senior church court, and covered the south of England and Wales.

Peculiars – areas not covered by the church courts. These usually came about due to some historical anomalies. ( Before 1858 , wills were proved in church courts, except in these peculiar areas.) Probate – establishing that the will is valid, and applying for the right to deal with the dead person’s affairs.

Real estate – land and any property on it. (See separate entry for Estate.)

Relict – a widow or (sometimes) widower.

Residue – whatever remains after all claims on the will have been settled.

Tenements – a property; a messuage may be split into tenements.

Testament – a document that sets out the distribution of moveable goods, chattels and money (compared with a will, which covers real estate).

Testator (male) or testatrix (female) – person who made the will.

Title – the ownership of property.

Will – a document that sets out the distribution of a person’s land and property (real estate) after their death (compared with a testament, which covers personal assets). Hence the expression “last will and testament”.