Definition
The person who holds and exercises a power of appointment — that is, the individual authorized to designate who will receive property or an interest in property pursuant to a power granted by a donor. The appointor acts under authority conferred by the creating instrument (typically a deed or will), not by virtue of any ownership interest in the property itself. The appointor is distinct from the donor (who creates and grants the power) and from the appointee (who receives the benefit when the power is exercised).
In the classical property law framework, the appointor exercises the power in the manner prescribed by the grant: the appointment may be limited to a defined class of objects, may be general or special, and is subject to whatever conditions or formalities the creating instrument requires. A defective execution — failing to comply with those formalities — renders the appointment void or voidable.
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Common Confusion
APPOINTOR / DONOR / APPOINTEE: These three roles are frequently collapsed in older texts. The donor creates the power. The appointor holds and exercises it — often, but not always, the same person who also benefits from the property under the instrument. The appointee is the person in whose favor the power is exercised. The confusion matters in research because older cases sometimes use "donor" loosely to mean the appointor, and "appointee" occasionally appears where "appointor" is intended in digest headnotes.
APPOINTOR / TRUSTEE: An appointor is not necessarily a trustee, though a trustee may hold a power of appointment. The appointor's authority is bounded by the power itself; a trustee's duties arise from fiduciary obligation. Conflating the two leads to misreading the scope of discretion and the applicable review standard.
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Why It Matters in Research
The term appears almost exclusively in property law and trusts contexts, concentrated in materials dealing with powers of appointment. Researchers should be alert to several navigational issues:
First, historical sources treat the appointor primarily in relation to the Statute of Uses (1535), which gave the appointor's exercise of the power its conveyancing effect. Modern American doctrine has largely shed this statutory apparatus, but many 19th-century cases and treatises — including Kent and Stephens, both cited in the dictionary sources — reason from the Statute of Uses framework. Reading those authorities without awareness of this background produces distorted analysis.
Second, the term "appointor" is used inconsistently across jurisdictions and periods. English equity courts maintained a strict vocabulary; American courts, particularly in the 19th century, were less disciplined, sometimes using "appointor" interchangeably with "donor" or even "grantor." When researching pre-1900 American cases, verify which role the court actually means.
Third, the scope of the appointor's power — general, special, or hybrid — determines the tax treatment under modern federal law, the creditors' rights exposure, and the applicable rule against perpetuities analysis. A research trail that begins with the appointor's identity must quickly branch into what kind of power was granted before substantive analysis is possible.
Fourth, the Black's 1st Edition entry contains a stray fragment ("Tax; tallage; tribute; imposition; payment") that is an OCR artifact or typesetting error from an adjacent entry. It has no bearing on the definition of appointor and should be disregarded.
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Historical Dictionary Support
The three historical sources that address the term directly — Black's 1st Edition, Bouvier's, and Burrill's — are in agreement on the core definition: the appointor is the person who executes a power of appointment, standing in contrast to the appointee who receives its benefit. All three anchor the definition in the same mid-19th-century secondary authority (Stephens, Kent, and Crabb on Real Property), reflecting a stable doctrinal consensus by that period.
Bouvier's is the most economical, simply tying the appointor to authorization "under the statute of uses" — useful for situating the term historically but unhelpful for modern research, where the Statute of Uses is no longer operative as such in most American jurisdictions.
Burrill's is the most complete of the historical entries, cross-referencing Crabb's Real Property alongside Kent and Stephens, and making the appointor/appointee contrast explicit. It is the most reliable of the three for a researcher needing a period-accurate starting point.
None of the historical sources address general versus special powers, the rule against perpetuities implications, or tax consequences — all of which dominate modern doctrine. Researchers should treat these entries as definitional anchors only, not as substantive guides.
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Jurisdictional Note
Most American states have codified aspects of the law of powers of appointment, with the Uniform Powers of Appointment Act (2013) adopted in a growing number of jurisdictions. The term "appointor" itself may be replaced by "powerholder" in modern statutes following the Uniform Act's preferred vocabulary. Researchers working with recent state materials should check local statutory terminology before assuming the classical vocabulary applies.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia — Powers of Appointment (for the full doctrinal framework governing creation, exercise, and failure of powers); Statute of Uses (for the historical conveyancing context underlying the classical definition).
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