Defined Terms  

 

Annuity – a right to receive fixed, periodic payments, either for life or for a term of years.(1)

 

Beneficiary – as it relates to trust beneficiaries, includes a person who has any present or future interest, vested or contingent, and also includes the owner of an interest by assignment or other transfer, and as it relates to a charitable trust, includes any person entitled to enforce the trust.(2)

 

Codicil – the supplement or addition to a Will; it may explain, modify, add to, subtract from, qualify, alter, restrain or revoke provisions in an existing Will. (1)

 

Conservator – a person who is appointed by the Probate Court to manage the estate of a protected person.(2)

 

Devise – means a testamentary disposition of real or personal property. (2)

 

Devisee – means any person designated in a Will to receive a devise. In the case of a devise to a trust or trustee, the trust or trustee is the devisee and the beneficiaries of the trust are not devisees.(2)

 

Decedent – a deceased person.(1)

 

Domicile – a person’s legal home. The place [county] where a person has his true, fixed and permanent home and principal establishment.(1)

 

Estate – the totality of assets and liabilities of decedent, including all manner of property, real and personal.(1)

  

Guardian – a person who has qualified as a guardian of an incapacitated person pursuant to testamentary or court appointment, but excludes one who is merely a guardian ad litem or a statutory guardian.(2)

 

Heirs – those persons, including the surviving spouse, who are entitled under the statute of intestate succession to the property of the decedent.(2)

 

Interested person – includes heirs, devisees, children, spouses, creditors, beneficiaries, and any others having a property right in or claim against a trust estate or the estate of a decedent, ward, or protected person which may be affected by the proceeding.(2)

 

Intestate – one who dies without a Will

 

Issue – of a person means all his lineal descendants whether natural or adoptive of all generations, with relationship of parent and child at each generation being determined by the definitions of child and parent as contained in the South Carolina Probate Code. (2)

 

Personal Representative – includes executor, administrator, successor Personal Representative, special administrator, and persons who perform substantially the same function under the law governing their status.(2)

 

Protected Person – a minor or incapacitated person for whom a conservator has been appointed or other protective order has been made. (3)

 

Right of Survivorship – the right of a survivor of a deceased person to the property of said deceased. A distinguishing characteristic of a joint tenancy relationship.(1)

 

Testator – one who dies leaving a Will.(1)

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1 - BLACK’S LAW DICTIONARY (6th Edition) 1991

2 - S.C. Code Ann. §62-1-201

3 - S.C. Code Ann. §62-5-101(3)