Definition
Administravit is a Latin term meaning "he has administered." In legal usage, it refers to the act of having administered an estate — specifically, the complete and lawful disposition of all assets that came into the hands of an executor or administrator. The term appears almost exclusively in the context of the plea plene administravit ("he has fully administered"), which an executor or administrator interposes as a defense when sued by a creditor or other claimant on the ground that no assets of the estate remain in hand to satisfy the demand.
When a creditor brings an action against an executor or administrator to recover a debt owed by the decedent, the executor may answer that there is nothing left to pay — that all assets received have already been lawfully applied to debts, funeral expenses, costs of administration, and other proper charges. The plea of plene administravit puts the claimant to the burden of proving that assets do in fact remain undistributed or that assets were misapplied.
A related but distinct plea is plene administravit praeter ("he has fully administered except"), used when the executor acknowledges having administered all assets except a specific sum or item, which may then be the subject of further proceedings.
---
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost nowhere outside of older pleading practice and historical probate materials. Researchers will encounter administravit — and plene administravit — primarily in treatises and form books predating modern code pleading, where formal Latin plea names governed estate litigation. After the adoption of the Field Code in New York (1848) and the subsequent spread of code and notice pleading across American jurisdictions, Latin plea designations fell out of common procedural use, though the underlying defense survived in substance.
When searching historical equity records, chancery proceedings, or early common law court reports involving executor or administrator liability, recognizing administravit as a term of art is essential. A record that shows a defendant executor "pleading administravit" is showing you a formal denial of assets available for judgment — not a general denial of liability.
Researchers should also be alert to the distinction between plene administravit and devastavit. An executor who pleads plene administravit is claiming lawful exhaustion of assets. An executor who has committed devastavit has wasted or misapplied estate assets and may be personally liable. These are opposite postures in estate litigation, and confusing them when reading historical pleading records will invert the legal situation entirely.
Because modern probate codes replaced most of this pleading architecture, contemporary secondary sources may not index administravit at all. Researchers working in pre-twentieth-century materials should consult historical treatises on executors and administrators for full procedural context.
---
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) defines administravit narrowly and accurately: it is the Latin for "he has administered," operative primarily through the phrase plene administravit. Black's correctly identifies the plea as belonging to an executor or administrator and notes that "fully administered" means lawful disposition of all assets received.
Black's entry is brief and functional, which reflects the term's limited scope. It is not a term with contested meanings across historical authorities — its content is procedurally specific and its use constrained. What historical dictionaries do not address is the practical litigation context: when the plea succeeded, what counter-evidence creditors could offer, and how the plea interacted with the executor's duty of accounting. For that depth, researchers must move to treatises such as Williams on Executors or Toller's Law of Executors and Administrators, where the interplay between plene administravit, the creditor's replication, and the executor's personal liability is developed at length.
---
Jurisdictional Note
The plea of plene administravit was a recognized common law form available in both English and American courts wherever executor liability was litigated under common law pleading rules. Jurisdictions that retained common law pleading longer — including some Southern states into the late nineteenth century — will show this plea form in court records well after it disappeared elsewhere. Modern equivalents, where they exist, are procedural defenses raised in probate or estate proceedings under applicable state codes rather than formal Latin pleas.
---