Definition
A person appointed or otherwise authorized to estimate and state the fair value of property — real or personal — submitted for examination. The appraiser's function is evaluative, not adjudicative: they determine what property is worth, typically under oath, so that a court, agency, or contracting party may act on that valuation. Appraisers appear in a wide range of legal contexts, including estate administration, eminent domain proceedings, customs enforcement, insurance loss adjustment, corporate dissenters' rights proceedings, and real estate transactions.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): One who performs appraisals.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): One who appraises; especially, a person appointed and sworn to estimate and fix the value of goods or estates.
The common and legal meanings align closely in substance, but the legal context adds a layer of formality that ordinary usage obscures. In law, the appraiser's authority and obligations frequently derive from appointment by a court or government body, are conditioned on an oath, and carry legal consequences for the parties relying on the valuation. A real estate appraiser hired privately for a mortgage lender operates in a regulated professional capacity; a court-appointed appraiser in a probate or condemnation proceeding carries quasi-official status. The word alone does not signal which context applies.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
General Appraisers. Appraisers appointed under federal statute to assist collectors of customs in valuing imported merchandise for duty purposes. This is a specific administrative role with a defined statutory basis distinct from common-law or court-appointed appraisers.
Merchant Appraisers. In customs practice, merchants called upon to assist in appraising invoices of imported goods, typically drawn from the trade community familiar with the relevant market. Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) identifies this subtype in the customs context.
Court-Appointed Appraisers. Appraisers designated by a probate court, civil court, or administrative tribunal to value property for estate administration, partition, condemnation, or dissolution proceedings. Their reports carry evidentiary weight and are subject to judicial review.
Private or Contractual Appraisers. Appraisers retained by parties — lenders, insurers, buyers, sellers — without court appointment. Their role is defined by contract and applicable professional licensing standards rather than by judicial authority.
Why It Matters in Research
The term APPRAISER is a connector term: it appears across property law, commercial law, administrative law, and procedure, meaning the researcher must always identify the appointing authority and the governing legal framework before treating one source as authoritative for another context.
Historical sources use the term almost exclusively in the court-appointment or customs-appointment sense. They do not anticipate the modern licensed private appraiser operating under state credentialing statutes — a role that emerged from federal regulatory frameworks beginning with the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 1989 (FIRREA). Researching modern appraisal disputes in real estate or lending contexts requires moving beyond the historical dictionaries entirely.
In the corpus, appraisers appear in at least three distinct procedural settings that researchers should not conflate: (1) estate and probate administration, where the appraiser values assets for distribution or tax purposes; (2) eminent domain and condemnation, where appraiser testimony often drives just-compensation determinations; and (3) corporate dissenters' rights proceedings, where a court may appoint an appraiser — sometimes called an appraiser or referee — to determine the fair value of shares held by dissenting shareholders. The vocabulary and standards differ across these settings.
Customs appraisers (general appraisers and merchant appraisers) are a historically important category that appears prominently in 19th-century federal case law and is largely obsolete in modern practice following reorganization of customs administration.
Jurisdictional variations in state probate codes affect how appraisers are selected, whether they must be sworn, and whether their valuations are binding or merely advisory. Researchers using 19th-century state cases should verify whether the appointing mechanism described there survived later code revision.
Historical Dictionary Support
All five historical sources converge on the same core definition: a person appointed by competent authority to ascertain and state the true value of property. The consistency across Black's (both editions), Bouvier's, and Burrill's reflects how settled the concept was in 19th-century practice — the appraiser was fundamentally a court or government auxiliary, not a private professional.
Burrill adds the oath requirement explicitly, noting that the appraiser "is usually sworn to perform such duty." This detail matters: the oath grounds the appraiser's liability and gives the valuation its evidentiary standing. Black's (2nd Ed.) expands the entry to include the customs-law subtypes, reflecting the significance of customs appraisement in the federal practice of that era.
Rapalje & Lawrence is notably spare, but its citation to statutory construction cases (Wilberforce on Statute Law; Iowa and New Jersey decisions) signals that the precise scope of the word in any given statute was itself litigated — courts were called upon to determine who qualified as an "appraiser" for statutory purposes. Researchers working with historical statutes should treat the term as potentially defined by the instrument rather than by general usage.
None of the historical sources address professional licensing, independence standards, or the regulatory frameworks that now govern appraisers in real estate and lending contexts. That body of law is entirely post-FIRREA and must be sourced elsewhere.
Jurisdictional Note
State probate and property codes vary considerably in how appraisers are appointed, compensated, and whether their reports are binding. Some states use the term interchangeably with "referee" or "commissioner" in partition and condemnation proceedings. Researchers should check the applicable state code directly rather than assuming uniform procedure from historical common-law sources.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Shareholders — Appraisal Rights (Dissenters' Rights) (The Law Mind Business Organizations & Corporate Law Encyclopedia)
Contingencies — Financing, Inspection, Appraisal, and Title Contingencies (The Law Mind Real Estate Transactions & Construction Encyclopedia)