Plain-language definitions for unfamiliar legal terms.

Glossary: records and decisions

Plain language, no jargon. 47 concise definitions cover Vermont estate planning, elder law, probate, trust, and fiduciary matters

The glossary defines the terms Vermont families meet in estate planning, elder law, probate, trusts and fiduciary work, from administrator, beneficiary and capacity to guardian, health-care agent and estate. Definitions are in plain language and, where useful, show why a word matters in practice

An administrator is a fiduciary appointed to administer a probate estate when there is no acting executor under an admitted will. A beneficiary is a person, organization, trust or other recipient entitled or potentially entitled to receive property or benefits, and being named does not hand anyone anything immediately

Capacity is the legally relevant ability to understand and make a particular decision, and it can differ by decision and by document. A fiduciary owes duties of loyalty, care and recordkeeping

Use the letters to jump to a term, and follow the related links to the service page that explains how the term works in a Vermont matter. A definition is not an answer about your own facts

Courts appoint one only when no executor is available or willing to serve, so the role usually surfaces after a will names nobody, or names someone who has already died or declined, and the appointment then follows a statutory order of priority rather than family preference

One document can cover both the agent and the instructions, or split them across two forms, and Vermont law leaves the format largely open

The word covers everything from managing a single bank account to running someone's entire financial life, so the actual scope always comes from the document itself

A Vermont resident who also owns a camp or a rental property in another state can trigger this without ever realizing it in advance

Naming someone here does not hand them anything immediately: timing, conditions, and survivorship rules written into the document still control

It overrides a will on that specific account, which is exactly why an outdated form can quietly undo an otherwise careful estate plan

People use the word loosely for any gift left at death, but its legal meaning is narrower and tied specifically to a will

Someone can lack the capacity to manage a complex trust while still having enough to sign a simple document, because the bar moves with what is being decided, and a family that assumes one fixed threshold applies everywhere is usually the family that ends up surprised later

A formally executed amendment to a will.

Scope varies widely. One order might cover a single account, another an entire estate, and the paperwork looks nothing alike between the two

A claim filed late, or filed in the wrong form, can be barred entirely, regardless of whether the underlying debt was real

Without the word 'durable' in the document, ordinary authority can lapse at the exact moment it would matter most

Two people can use the same word to mean very different things: one the whole financial picture a family talks about at dinner, the other a narrow legal entity that exists only in court paperwork and closes once its work is done

Nomination in a will is not the same as authority. Nothing happens until the court formally appoints the person

The duty attaches to the role, not to good intentions, so a well-meaning fiduciary can still breach it through carelessness alone, and courts generally do not accept 'I meant well' as a substitute for the standard the role requires

Naming someone does not activate their authority right away; the conditions written into the directive still have to be met first, and a hospital that has never seen the document has no way to know the agent's authority even exists yet

Someone can be a legal heir and still receive nothing, if a will or a beneficiary designation directs the property elsewhere

The list of who qualifies can be longer than families expect, and it can include people the decedent never intended to involve at all, from a creditor nobody remembered to a distant relative who only surfaces once notice goes out

Vermont's default succession order rarely matches what a person would have chosen, which is the whole argument for writing a will in the first place, since the statute has no way to know who mattered most to a particular family

A rushed or incomplete inventory tends to resurface later, usually during an accounting dispute or a tax question nobody anticipated at the start

Irrevocable does not mean every change is impossible. Vermont law provides different modification, termination and nonjudicial-settlement routes, subject to their conditions.

Under 14A V.S.A. § 411, some modifications can be approved even without every beneficiary’s consent if the statutory protections are met. Section 111 limits nonjudicial settlements by the trust’s material purpose and what a court could approve.

Ask which route and consents apply to the proposed change

Banks and other institutions generally will not act for a fiduciary without seeing these, regardless of what the will itself says, so a nominated executor who has not yet been formally appointed by the court often cannot even close a simple account

The life tenant and the remainder beneficiary can end up with conflicting interests, one wants to spend, the other wants to preserve, and a deed that never spells out who pays for a new roof leaves both sides guessing

Federal law lets a state reach past the probate estate, so the state's own definition matters. The Vermont recovery notice from the Department of Vermont Health Access, last revised in 2012, defines the estate as the property included when the estate is filed in probate court. Confirm current practice before assuming a deed or a trust puts a house out of reach

A will or trust provision, also called an in terrorem clause, that revokes a beneficiary's gift if that beneficiary challenges the document and loses. It deters a challenge rather than preventing one from being filed, and courts generally read it narrowly

These transfer on their own regardless of what a will says, which is why an outdated beneficiary form can override even careful drafting, sometimes sending an entire retirement account to an ex-spouse nobody meant to include

Vermont's probate chapters mostly say 'executor' and 'administrator'. 'Personal representative' is the umbrella term that some newer statutes use for either one, and a form or a bank employee using one over another usually means nothing more than habit

The document can grant broad authority or a single narrow power, and nothing about the name alone tells you which

Losing capacity does not remove someone from this role; it can, however, end the agent's authority unless the document was written to survive it

Whether something falls into this category can turn on a single line of paperwork, like how an account was titled decades earlier

This interest can sit dormant for years, even decades, before it ever becomes anyone's property to use

Right up until incapacity or death, the settlor usually keeps full control, which is exactly why funding it still matters, since a trust holding no actual property offers none of the probate avoidance it was created to provide

The three terms, settlor, grantor, trustor, mean the same thing, and which one a document uses is mostly a drafting-style choice

Vermont's dollar threshold and asset rules for this procedure change over time, so an old estimate is not a safe one to rely on, and an estate that qualified under a number from a few years ago may not qualify under the current one

A trust with no named successor, or one where every named person has already declined, can end up needing a court to appoint one instead, which is slower and more public than the trust was probably designed to be

The same word covers a two-page family document and a complex, multi-beneficiary arrangement running for decades: the label alone says little about the complexity underneath

A will that never gets funded with the right beneficiary and titling work can still leave probate as the default path for most of the estate

Look up a term when a letter, form, or lawyer uses it; each entry gives a plain definition and links to related terms and pages. Read the definition, then check the related entries

The controlling meaning is in the statute, the court rule, or the document itself. Where it matters, check the primary source

What is the difference between an executor and an administrator?

An executor is named in a will. An administrator is appointed by the court when there is no will or no named executor; both are fiduciaries who manage the estate under court supervision

Which word applies if there was no will: intestate or testate?

Intestate. A person who dies intestate left no valid will, so Vermont's intestacy statute decides who inherits probate property. Testate means a will exists, and the Probate Division handles both kinds of estate

No. A trustee manages property held in a trust, often without court supervision

An executor settles a probate estate under the court. One person can hold both roles in a family, at different times

A fiduciary manages property or makes decisions for someone else and must put that person's interests first. Executors, trustees, agents, and guardians are all fiduciaries with duties that the law enforces

Some legal terms carry a settled meaning from long use, such as intestate or codicil. Vermont's statutes and the Judiciary use plain wording where they can; ask your lawyer to explain any term that is not clear

A written amendment to an existing will. The Judiciary notes that codicils can be filed with a will held for safekeeping; a codicil must be signed and witnessed like the will it changes

The court order that approves how an estate's remaining property is divided. The Judiciary says an executor may not distribute assets to beneficiaries without the court's approval, and the decree is that approval

Where can I find terms not on this list?

The Vermont Judiciary has its own Glossary of Legal Terms, and the probate pages carry a glossary of probate terms. For statutory terms, the definitions section of the statute controls

Many entries link to related terms and to the guide or service page where the concept is explained in context. Follow those links for the practical steps behind a definition

Legal words change by place and habit; the Judiciary notes that an advance directive is also called an advance health care directive, a durable power of attorney for health care, a health care proxy, a living will, or a terminal care document. Ask which one a form means