Plain-language definitions for unfamiliar legal terms.

A fiduciary appointed to administer a probate estate when there is no acting executor under an admitted will.

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.

A document that can name a health-care agent and state instructions or preferences for future health-care decisions.

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

A person authorized to act for another person under a power of attorney or another legal arrangement.

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.

An additional estate-administration process that may be needed where a decedent owned property outside the primary state of administration.

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

A person, organization, trust, or other recipient entitled or potentially entitled to receive property or benefits under an instrument or account.

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

A contractual instruction naming who receives an account, policy, or benefit after the owner's death, often outside a will.

It overrides a will on that specific account, which is exactly why an outdated form can quietly undo an otherwise careful estate plan.

A gift made through a will; the document's wording and applicable law determine the exact property and recipient.

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

The legally relevant ability to understand and make a particular decision; the standard can differ by decision and document.

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. It should be read with the original will and any other codicils.

Multiple codicils invite conflicting instructions.

A court-appointed fiduciary with authority defined by the governing law and court order, often concerning property or financial matters.

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

A demand asserting that a debt or obligation should be paid by an estate or trust, subject to applicable procedure and priority.

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

A person who has died.

Paperwork uses it instead of a name.

A gift of property through a will; Vermont statutes may use related terms when describing recipients and estate rights.

Older documents often use this and 'bequest' interchangeably.

A power of attorney designed to remain effective despite the principal's later incapacity, subject to its terms and applicable law.

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

Depending on context, the property, rights, and obligations connected to a deceased person or the probate entity administering them.

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.

A person nominated in a will and appointed by the Probate Division to administer the estate under legal and court authority.

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

A person or institution with duties of loyalty, care, recordkeeping, and proper administration for another person or property interest.

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 actually requires.

Completing the ownership, assignment, or beneficiary steps needed to place appropriate property under a trust's control.

An unfunded trust protects nothing.

A person appointed by a court to exercise only the authority granted for a minor or an adult under the applicable guardianship process.

The order's limits are the real limits.

A person named to make authorized health-care decisions when the conditions in an advance directive and applicable law are met.

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.

A person who may inherit under intestacy law; an heir is not necessarily the same as a beneficiary named in a will or account.

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

A person or entity whose property right, claim, priority, or represented interest may be affected by a probate proceeding; the meaning depends on the matter.

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.

Dying without an effective will governing the probate property at issue, causing statutory succession rules to apply.

Vermont's default succession order rarely matches what a person would have actually 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 documented list and valuation of property, often prepared for probate, trust administration, tax, insurance, or planning purposes.

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

A trust that generally cannot be revoked by the settlor as a matter of retained right; modification may still be possible in defined circumstances.

The word 'irrevocable' is doing real work here — undoing one typically requires either a court process or every beneficiary's consent, not a phone call, and a settlor who signs one expecting to change their mind later is usually disappointed.

Court-issued evidence that a fiduciary has been appointed and has the authority stated by the court.

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.

A property interest measured by a person's life, often paired with a future remainder interest and specific rights or limitations.

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.

A common term for written health-care instructions; Vermont planning frequently addresses these choices within an advance directive.

Vermont folds this into the advance directive.

A process through which a Medicaid agency may seek recovery of certain paid benefits after a recipient's death, subject to current law and exceptions.

A house that avoided probate can still be reached by this process, which is a common and costly surprise for families who assumed a beneficiary deed or a trust automatically put the property 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.

Property that transfers through a valid mechanism other than administration under a will or intestacy, such as survivorship, a beneficiary designation, or trust ownership.

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.

A general term for a court-appointed executor or administrator responsible for a decedent's estate.

Vermont statutes increasingly favor this broader term over the older 'executor' and 'administrator' labels, though all three still appear constantly in practice, and a form or a bank employee using one over another usually means nothing more than habit.

A document through which a principal grants an agent authority to act in specified financial or legal matters.

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

The person who grants authority to an agent under a power of attorney.

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.

The court-supervised process used for wills, fiduciary appointments, estate administration, and other matters within the Probate Division's authority.

Titling usually matters more than size.

Property requiring transfer or administration through a probate estate because no controlling non-probate transfer applies.

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

A person or organization entitled or potentially entitled to receive trust or property interests after a prior interest ends.

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

A trust generally created during life that the settlor may amend or revoke while retaining the required authority and capacity.

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

The person who creates or contributes property to a trust; some documents use grantor or trustor for a similar role.

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

A simplified estate procedure available only when the current statutory and court eligibility requirements are satisfied.

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 designed to hold and administer property for a person with disabilities while addressing benefit, distribution, tax, and care-planning rules.

Bad drafting can cost the benefits it protects.

The person or institution authorized to serve after a prior trustee dies, resigns, becomes unable to act, or is removed under the trust and applicable law.

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.

A person who makes a will.

A trust calls this role something else.

A legal relationship in which a trustee holds and administers property for beneficiaries or a permitted purpose under governing terms and law.

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 fiduciary who administers trust property under the trust's terms and applicable law.

The duty is the same, paid or not.

Improper pressure that overcomes a person's free will in making or changing a will, trust, or other document, so that the result reflects the influencer's wishes rather than the person's own. Family disagreement or unequal treatment alone does not establish it.

A formally executed document that can direct probate property, nominate an executor, and address guardianship and testamentary trusts.

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.