Terms Used In Virginia Code > Title 19.2 > Chapter 12 - Preliminary Hearing

• Abstract of judgment: In a federal criminal proceeding, A certification from a U.S. District Court clerk that a judgment of restitution was entered against the defendant owing to the victim. If the defendant inherits, owns, or sells real property or holdings, these assets can then be attached at the state and local levels as well.
• Accounting period: includes a part of a calendar year or another period of 12 calendar months or approximately 12 calendar months that begins when an income interest begins or ends when an income interest ends. See Virginia Code 64.2-1033
• Adjourn: A motion to adjourn a legislative chamber or a committee, if passed, ends that day's session.
• Adult: means an individual who is at least 18 years of age. See Virginia Code 64.2-900
• Adult: means a person 18 years of age or more. See Virginia Code 1-203
• Affidavit: A written statement of facts confirmed by the oath of the party making it, before a notary or officer having authority to administer oaths.
• Affirmed: In the practice of the appellate courts, the decree or order is declared valid and will stand as rendered in the lower court.
• 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.
• Answer: The formal written statement by a defendant responding to a civil complaint and setting forth the grounds for defense.
• Applicable value: means the amount of the net fair market value of a trust taken into account under §
• Attorney-at-law: A person who is legally qualified and licensed to practice law, and to represent and act for clients in legal proceedings.
• Bail: Security given for the release of a criminal defendant or witness from legal custody (usually in the form of money) to secure his/her appearance on the day and time appointed.
• Bail: means the pretrial release of a person from custody upon those terms and conditions specified by order of an appropriate judicial officer. See Virginia Code 19.2-119
• 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}
• Beneficiary: means an individual for whom property has been transferred to or held under a declaration of trust by a custodial trustee for the individual's use and benefit under this chapter. See Virginia Code 64.2-900
• Beneficiary: includes :

  1. See Virginia Code 64.2-1033

• Board of supervisors: means the governing body of a county. See Virginia Code 15.2-102
• Bond: means the posting by a person or his surety of a written promise to pay a specific sum, secured or unsecured, ordered by an appropriate judicial officer as a condition of bail to assure performance of the terms and conditions contained in the recognizance. See Virginia Code 19.2-119
• Bond with surety: includes the payment in cash of the full amount of the required bond and, in such case, no surety shall be required. See Virginia Code 1-205
• Chief judge: The judge who has primary responsibility for the administration of a court but also decides cases; chief judges are determined by seniority.
• Circumstantial evidence: All evidence except eyewitness testimony.
• Codicil: An addition, change, or supplement to a will executed with the same formalities required for the will itself.
• Common disaster: A sudden and extraordinary misfortune that brings about the simultaneous or near-simultaneous deaths of two or more associated persons, such as husband and wife.
• Common law: The legal system that originated in England and is now in use in the United States. It is based on judicial decisions rather than legislative action.
• Conservator: means a person appointed or qualified by a court to manage the estate of an individual or a person legally authorized to perform substantially the same functions. See Virginia Code 64.2-900
• Constitutional officer: means an officer provided for pursuant to Article VII, § 4 of the Constitution. See Virginia Code 15.2-102
• Continuance: Putting off of a hearing ot trial until a later time.
• Conviction: A judgement of guilt against a criminal defendant.
• Council: means the governing body of a city or town. See Virginia Code 15.2-102
• County: means any existing county or such unit hereafter created. See Virginia Code 15.2-102
• Court: means any court vested with appropriate jurisdiction under the Constitution and laws of the Commonwealth. See Virginia Code 19.2-5
• Court: means a circuit court of the Commonwealth. See Virginia Code 64.2-900
• Court: means the court in the Commonwealth having jurisdiction relating to a trust, estate, or life estate or other term interest described in subdivision 2 of § Virginia Code 64.2-1033
• Docket: A log containing brief entries of court proceedings.
• Donee: The recipient of a gift.
• Donor: The person who makes a gift.
• Employee: means a state police officer. See Virginia Code 51.1-201
• Entitlement: A Federal program or provision of law that requires payments to any person or unit of government that meets the eligibility criteria established by law. Entitlements constitute a binding obligation on the part of the Federal Government, and eligible recipients have legal recourse if the obligation is not fulfilled. Social Security and veterans' compensation and pensions are examples of entitlement programs.
• 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}
• Estate: includes the property of the decedent as the estate is originally constituted and the property of the estate as it exists at any time during administration. See Virginia Code 64.2-1033
• Executor: A male person named in a will to carry out the decedent
• Express unitrust: means a trust for which, under the terms of the trust without regard to this article, income or net income must or may be calculated as a unitrust amount. See Virginia Code 64.2-1039
• 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.
• farm: means any person that obtains at least 51 percent of its annual gross income from agricultural operations and produces the agricultural waste used as feedstock for the waste-to-energy technology, (ii) "agricultural waste" means biomass waste materials capable of decomposition that are produced from the raising of plants and animals during agricultural operations, including animal manures, bedding, plant stalks, hulls, and vegetable matter, and (iii) "waste-to-energy technology" means any technology, including but not limited to a methane digester, that converts agricultural waste into gas, steam, or heat that is used to generate electricity on-site. See Virginia Code 1-222.1
• Fiduciary: A trustee, executor, or administrator.
• Fiduciary: includes a guardian, committee, trustee, executor, conservator, or personal representative. See Virginia Code 64.2-100
• Fiduciary: includes a trustee, trust director under the Uniform Directed Trust Act (§ Virginia Code 64.2-1033
• Fraud: Intentional deception resulting in injury to another.
• Freedom of Information Act: A federal law that mandates that all the records created and kept by federal agencies in the executive branch of government must be open for public inspection and copying. The only exceptions are those records that fall into one of nine exempted categories listed in the statute. ^{Source: OCC}
• Governing body: means the board of supervisors of a county, council of a city, or council of a town, as the context may require. See Virginia Code 15.2-102
• Governing instrument: means a deed, will, trust, insurance or annuity policy, account with POD designation, security registered in beneficiary form (TOD), or pension, profit-sharing, retirement, or similar benefit plan; instrument creating or exercising a power of appointment or a power of attorney; or a donative, appointive, or nominative instrument of any other type. See Virginia Code 64.2-2200
• Gross estate: The total fair market value of all property and property interests, real and personal, tangible and intangible, of which a decedent had beneficial ownership at the time of death before subtractions for deductions, debts, administrative expenses, and casualty losses suffered during estate administration.
• Guardian: means a person appointed or qualified by a court as a guardian of a person, including a limited guardian, but not a person who is only a guardian ad litem. See Virginia Code 64.2-900
• Habeas corpus: A writ that is usually used to bring a prisoner before the court to determine the legality of his imprisonment. It may also be used to bring a person in custody before the court to give testimony, or to be prosecuted.
• Hearsay: Statements by a witness who did not see or hear the incident in question but heard about it from someone else. Hearsay is usually not admissible as evidence in court.
• Incapacitated: means lacking the ability to manage property and business affairs effectively by reason of mental illness, mental deficiency, physical illness or disability, chronic use of drugs, chronic intoxication, confinement, detention by a foreign power, disappearance, minority, or other disabling cause. See Virginia Code 64.2-900
• Income: includes a part of receipts from a sale, exchange, or liquidation of a principal asset, to the extent provided in Articles 4 (§ Virginia Code 64.2-1033
• Normal retirement date: means a member's sixtieth birthday. See Virginia Code 51.1-201
• Oath: A promise to tell the truth.
• Oath: includes affirmation. See Virginia Code 1-228
• 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.
• Payor: means a trustee, insurer, business entity, employer, government, governmental agency, subdivision, or instrumentality, or any other person authorized or obligated by law or a governing instrument to make payments. See Virginia Code 64.2-2200
• Person: means an individual, corporation, business trust, estate, trust, partnership, joint venture, association, or any other legal or commercial entity. See Virginia Code 64.2-900
• Person: means any accused, or any juvenile taken into custody pursuant to § Virginia Code 19.2-119
• Person: means an individual, estate, trust, business or nonprofit entity, public corporation, government or governmental subdivision, agency, or instrumentality, or other legal entity. See Virginia Code 64.2-1033
• Personal representative: means an executor, administrator, successor personal representative, special administrator, or person that performs substantially the same function with respect to an estate under the law governing the person's status. See Virginia Code 64.2-1033
• Personal representative: includes the executor of a will or the administrator of the estate of a decedent, the administrator of such estate with the will annexed, the administrator of such estate unadministered by a former representative, whether there is a will or not, any person who is under the order of a circuit court to take into his possession the estate of a decedent for administration, and every other curator of a decedent's estate, for or against whom suits may be brought for causes of action that accrued to or against the decedent. See Virginia Code 1-234
• Plea: In a criminal case, the defendant's statement pleading "guilty" or "not guilty" in answer to the charges, a declaration made in open court.
• Pleadings: Written statements of the parties in a civil case of their positions. In the federal courts, the principal pleadings are the complaint and the answer.
• Preliminary hearing: A hearing where the judge decides whether there is enough evidence to make the defendant have a trial.
• Principal: means property held in trust for distribution to, production of income for, or use by a current or successor beneficiary. See Virginia Code 64.2-1033
• Pro se: A Latin term meaning "on one's own behalf"; in courts, it refers to persons who present their own cases without lawyers.
• Probate: Proving a will
• Probation: A sentencing alternative to imprisonment in which the court releases convicted defendants under supervision as long as certain conditions are observed.
• Public corporation: means the Commonwealth of Virginia or any political subdivision thereof or any incorporated municipality therein or any public agency of the Commonwealth or of any political subdivision thereof or of any municipality therein. See Virginia Code 1-219.1
• Public defender: Represent defendants who can't afford an attorney in criminal matters.
• Real property: Land, and all immovable fixtures erected on, growing on, or affixed to the land.
• Recognizance: means a signed commitment by a person to appear in court as directed and to adhere to any other terms ordered by an appropriate judicial officer as a condition of bail. See Virginia Code 19.2-119
• Record: means information that is inscribed on a tangible medium or that is stored in an electronic or other medium and is retrievable in perceivable form. See Virginia Code 64.2-1033
• Remand: When an appellate court sends a case back to a lower court for further proceedings.
• Retirement system: means the State Police Officers' Retirement System. See Virginia Code 51.1-201
• Right of survivorship: The ownership rights that result in the acquisition of title to property by reason of having survived other co-owners.
• Special tax benefit: means :

  1. See Virginia Code 64.2-1033

• State: means a state, territory, or possession of the United States, the District of Columbia, or the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. See Virginia Code 64.2-900
• state agency: means the same as that term is defined in § Virginia Code 1-206
• Subpoena: A command to a witness to appear and give testimony.
• Subpoena duces tecum: A command to a witness to produce documents.
• Successive interest: means the interest of a successor beneficiary. See Virginia Code 64.2-1033
• Successor beneficiary: means a person entitled to receive income or principal or to use property when an income interest or other current interest ends. See Virginia Code 64.2-1033
• Summons: Another word for subpoena used by the criminal justice system.
• Supreme Court: means the Supreme Court of Virginia. See Virginia Code 1-249
• Terms of a trust: means :

  1. See Virginia Code 64.2-1033

• Testify: Answer questions in court.
• Testimony: Evidence presented orally by witnesses during trials or before grand juries.
• Tier-city: means an incorporated community within a consolidated county that (i) has within defined boundaries a population of 5,000 or more, (ii) has been designated as a tier-city by the General Assembly, and (iii) has both the powers of a town and such additional powers as may be granted tier-cities by the General Assembly. See Virginia Code 1-252
• Tort: A civil wrong or breach of a duty to another person, as outlined by law. A very common tort is negligent operation of a motor vehicle that results in property damage and personal injury in an automobile accident.
• Town: means any existing town or an incorporated community within one or more counties which became a town before noon, July one, nineteen hundred seventy-one, as provided by law or which has within defined boundaries a population of 1,000 or more and which has become a town as provided by law. See Virginia Code 15.2-102
• Town: means any existing town or an incorporated community within one or more counties which became a town before noon, July 1, 1971, as provided by law or which has within defined boundaries a population of 1,000 or more and which has become a town as provided by law. See Virginia Code 1-254
• Transferor: means a person who creates a custodial trust by transfer or declaration. See Virginia Code 64.2-900
• Trial: A hearing that takes place when the defendant pleads "not guilty" and witnesses are required to come to court to give evidence.
• Trust: includes all trusts described in § Virginia Code 64.2-1033
• Trust company: means a financial institution, corporation, or other legal entity authorized to exercise general trust powers. See Virginia Code 64.2-900
• Trustee: A person or institution holding and administering property in trust.
• Trustee: means a trustee under a probated will or an inter vivos trust instrument. See Virginia Code 64.2-100
• Trustee: includes an original, additional, or successor trustee, whether or not appointed or confirmed by a court. See Virginia Code 64.2-1033
• Unitrust: includes an express unitrust. See Virginia Code 64.2-1039
• Unitrust amount: means an amount computed by multiplying a determined value of a trust by a determined percentage. See Virginia Code 64.2-1039
• Unitrust policy: means a policy described in §§