Massachusetts General Laws > Chapter 65 – Taxation of Legacies and Successions
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Terms Used In Massachusetts General Laws > Chapter 65 - Taxation of Legacies and Successions
- Annuity: A periodic (usually annual) payment of a fixed sum of money for either the life of the recipient or for a fixed number of years. A series of payments under a contract from an insurance company, a trust company, or an individual. Annuity payments are made at regular intervals over a period of more than one full year.
- Appeal: A request made after a trial, asking another court (usually the court of appeals) to decide whether the trial was conducted properly. To make such a request is "to appeal" or "to take an appeal." One who appeals is called the appellant.
- Appellate: About appeals; an appellate court has the power to review the judgement of another lower court or tribunal.
- Appraisal: A determination of property value.
- Appropriation: The provision of funds, through an annual appropriations act or a permanent law, for federal agencies to make payments out of the Treasury for specified purposes. The formal federal spending process consists of two sequential steps: authorization
- Beneficiary: A person who is entitled to receive the benefits or proceeds of a will, trust, insurance policy, retirement plan, annuity, or other contract. Source: OCC
- Bequest: Property gifted by will.
- Codicil: An addition, change, or supplement to a will executed with the same formalities required for the will itself.
- Contemplation of death: The expectation of death that provides the primary motive to make a gift.
- Decedent: A deceased person.
- Deed: The legal instrument used to transfer title in real property from one person to another.
- Dependent: A person dependent for support upon another.
- Devise: To gift property by will.
- Donee: The recipient of a gift.
- Donor: The person who makes a gift.
- Equitable: Pertaining to civil suits in "equity" rather than in "law." In English legal history, the courts of "law" could order the payment of damages and could afford no other remedy. See damages. A separate court of "equity" could order someone to do something or to cease to do something. See, e.g., injunction. In American jurisprudence, the federal courts have both legal and equitable power, but the distinction is still an important one. For example, a trial by jury is normally available in "law" cases but not in "equity" cases. Source: U.S. Courts
- Executor: A male person named in a will to carry out the decedent
- Fair market value: The price at which an asset would change hands in a transaction between a willing, informed buyer and a willing, informed seller.
- Fiduciary: A trustee, executor, or administrator.
- Fraud: Intentional deception resulting in injury to another.
- Gift: A voluntary transfer or conveyance of property without consideration, or for less than full and adequate consideration based on fair market value.
- Grantor: The person who establishes a trust and places property into it.
- Inter vivos: Transfer of property from one living person to another living person.
- Interests: includes any form of membership in a domestic or foreign nonprofit corporation. See Massachusetts General Laws ch. 156D sec. 11.01
- Intestate: Dying without leaving a will.
- Joint tenancy: A form of property ownership in which two or more parties hold an undivided interest in the same property that was conveyed under the same instrument at the same time. A joint tenant can sell his (her) interest but not dispose of it by will. Upon the death of a joint tenant, his (her) undivided interest is distributed among the surviving joint tenants.
- Jurisdiction: (1) The legal authority of a court to hear and decide a case. Concurrent jurisdiction exists when two courts have simultaneous responsibility for the same case. (2) The geographic area over which the court has authority to decide cases.
- Legacy: A gift of property made by will.
- Legatee: A beneficiary of a decedent
- Lien: A claim against real or personal property in satisfaction of a debt.
- Life estate: A property interest limited in duration to the life of the individual holding the interest (life tenant).
- Mortgage: The written agreement pledging property to a creditor as collateral for a loan.
- Partnership: A voluntary contract between two or more persons to pool some or all of their assets into a business, with the agreement that there will be a proportional sharing of profits and losses.
- Personal property: All property that is not real property.
- Probate: Proving a will
- Real property: Land, and all immovable fixtures erected on, growing on, or affixed to the land.
- Settlement: Parties to a lawsuit resolve their difference without having a trial. Settlements often involve the payment of compensation by one party in satisfaction of the other party's claims.
- Tenancy by the entirety: A type of joint tenancy between husband and wife that is recognized in some States. Neither party can sever the joint tenancy relationship; when a spouse dies, the survivor acquires full title to the property.
- Testate: To die leaving a will.
- Testator: A male person who leaves a will at death.
- Trustee: A person or institution holding and administering property in trust.