Definition
Worthy or meritorious on the basis of intrinsic worth or merit, without reference to condition, circumstance, or financial need. As used in legal instruments, "deserving" is not a term of limitation that confines a class to the poor, the needy, or objects qualifying as charitable uses. A gift, bequest, or trust in favor of "deserving" persons or purposes is therefore not automatically a charitable disposition in the technical legal sense, and courts will look beyond the word itself to determine whether the testator or grantor intended to restrict the class or merely to express approval of its members.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Worthy of reward or praise; meritorious; meriting something — whether reward or punishment — based on conduct or character.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Desert; merit. Used in the sense of earned worth, often in a moral or civic register ("a person of great deservings from the republic").
The gap between common and legal meaning is not one of opposition but of legal consequence. In ordinary language, calling someone "deserving" is simply an expression of approval. In legal instruments — particularly wills and trust documents — the same word has been litigated as a potentially limiting term. Courts have had to decide whether "deserving" restricts a class (to the poor, to those with demonstrated need) or merely characterizes it. The historical legal authorities answer that the word imposes no such restriction, but researchers should not assume that conclusion is uniform across all instruments and jurisdictions.
Common Confusion
"Deserving" is sometimes read as equivalent to "needy" or "in necessitous circumstances," particularly in older trust instruments where context suggests a philanthropic motive. Courts have consistently rejected this conflation when the instrument does not expressly impose a poverty or need requirement. A trust for "deserving young men" is not, by that language alone, a trust for indigent young men. Researchers should also distinguish "deserving" from "worthy," which appears in similar constructions and has its own modest body of interpretive case law.
Why It Matters in Research
The operative legal question around "deserving" most often arises in the construction of wills and charitable trust instruments. The risk for researchers is treating "deserving" as a synonym for "needy" or as a term that automatically invokes charitable-use doctrine. Bouvier's citation to 130 Mass. 211 is the anchor authority for the proposition that "deserving" is not so limited, and that case should be the first stop when the word appears in a testamentary or trust context.
Researchers working in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century probate and equity materials should be alert to the word appearing in bequest clauses such as "to such deserving persons as my trustees shall select" or "for deserving charitable purposes." Whether such language creates a valid trust, a power of appointment, or an unenforceable precatory expression depends on surrounding language — "deserving" alone does not resolve the question.
The word also appears in non-testamentary contexts: sentencing, equitable relief, and administrative determinations of eligibility. In those settings, "deserving" typically functions as a judicial or administrative characterization rather than a term of art, and the historical legal dictionary definitions carry less direct weight.
Anderson's entry is truncated in the available text and pivots mid-entry to design patent doctrine, which is unrelated to the primary definition. Researchers should treat Anderson's solely for its opening proposition — that "deserving" denotes worth or merit without regard to condition — and disregard the patent material as a transcription artifact.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier and Anderson agree on the core proposition: "deserving" denotes merit or worth and is not confined by circumstances of need or poverty. Bouvier's entry is the more useful of the two because it grounds the definition in a specific judicial authority rather than leaving it as a bare assertion.
Both historical dictionaries are brief, and neither engages with the word's appearance in sentencing or equitable contexts. That silence reflects the primary nineteenth-century legal concern with testamentary construction; modern researchers dealing with "deserving" outside probate and trust law will find limited guidance in either source.
Neither dictionary addresses the interaction between "deserving" and the cy-pres doctrine, the general charitable intent requirement, or the distinction between a power in trust and a bare power. Those are the analytical frames a researcher will need when the word appears in disputed instrument litigation, and they must be sourced elsewhere.