Definition
A donation is a voluntary transfer of property or funds from one party (the donor) to another (the donee) without consideration — that is, without payment or exchange of value. The donor relinquishes title and control, and the transfer is complete upon delivery. Three subcategories appear with regularity in legal sources:
1. Inter vivos donation. A gift made between living persons, effective immediately and irrevocably upon delivery. No expectation of death is involved. This is the general, modern sense of the word.
2. Donation mortis causa (gift in contemplation of death). A conditional gift of personal property made by a donor who believes death is imminent. The gift takes effect only if the donor dies from the anticipated peril; it is automatically revoked if the donor recovers or escapes the danger. Delivery by the donor is required. This form carries strict requirements and is treated distinctly from both inter vivos gifts and testamentary bequests.
3. Donation in ecclesiastical law. A historical mode of acquiring a church benefice by deed of gift alone, bypassing the ordinary steps of presentation, institution, and induction. This meaning is obsolete in most modern jurisdictions but appears throughout pre-twentieth-century English legal literature.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A voluntary gift or contribution for a specific cause; the act of giving or bestowing.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): The act of giving or bestowing; a grant; that which is transferred to another gratuitously; a gift.
The common and legal definitions overlap substantially, but the legal term carries precision the ordinary word does not. In everyday speech, a donation is complete when handed over and carries no conditions. In law, the distinction between an inter vivos donation and a donation mortis causa turns entirely on conditionality and the circumstances of death — a gap that matters enormously in estate disputes. Researchers should not assume the colloquial sense of "donation as completed gift" applies when encountering the term in older probate or equity materials.
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Common Confusion
DONATION vs. BEQUEST. A donation mortis causa resembles a testamentary bequest because it anticipates the donor's death, but it is not a will. It requires delivery during the donor's lifetime and is revocable by recovery. A bequest operates through a valid will, requires no delivery, and takes effect only at death. Courts and historical sources sometimes blur these categories; researchers in probate records should verify which mechanism is actually at issue.
DONATION vs. GRANT. Historical sources occasionally use donation and grant interchangeably for transfers of real property, particularly in land-grant contexts. Technically, a donation in its strict sense operates by deed of gift without consideration; a grant may involve consideration or governmental authority. The distinction collapses in informal usage but matters when parsing chain-of-title documents.
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Core Elements
For a donation mortis causa to be legally valid, the following elements are generally required:
— Contemplation of death: The donor must be facing a specific, existing peril — illness, imminent surgery, dangerous circumstances — not merely the general prospect of mortality.
— Delivery: The donor must actually transfer possession of the property to the donee. Constructive delivery (handing over a key or a document of title) may suffice in some jurisdictions.
— Condition on death: The gift must be conditioned on the donor dying from the anticipated peril. If the donor survives, the gift fails automatically.
— Personal property: At common law, mortis causa gifts were limited to personal property. Some modern jurisdictions have extended or modified this rule by statute.
— Capacity: The donor must have donative intent and legal capacity at the time of the gift.
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Why It Matters in Research
The word donation does significant shifting across time and subject matter, and researchers should approach it with care.
Mortis causa traps. Anderson's Dictionary of Law defines donation almost exclusively through the mortis causa form, which was a live doctrinal battleground in nineteenth-century equity. Researchers reading opinions from that period will encounter donation used in this narrow, conditional sense far more often than the general inter vivos meaning. Assuming the modern colloquial sense will produce misreadings.
Ecclesiastical law obsolescence. The ecclesiastical meaning — acquiring a benefice by deed of gift — appears in Black's, Burrill's, and Rapalje & Lawrence and was a real legal mechanism under the Church of England's patronage system. It has no practical application in contemporary American law but surfaces in English legal history, colonial church records, and comparative ecclesiastical law materials. Researchers working in those areas should flag the term when it appears in proximity to advowson and benefice.
Rapalje & Lawrence's Latin maxim. The entry from Rapalje & Lawrence preserves the maxim from Coke on Littleton: Donationum alia perfecta, alia incepta et non perfecta — some gifts are perfect, others incipient and not yet perfected. This is a critical research signal. Delivery was the line between incipient and completed donation, and many historical disputes turned on exactly when (or whether) delivery occurred. This framework underlies much of the nineteenth-century case law on incomplete gifts in equity.
Statutory usage. Rapalje & Lawrence flags that donation carries a specific meaning in particular statutes (citing Indiana and Ohio authorities), reminding researchers that the word's scope may be defined differently by the instrument being interpreted. Do not assume the common-law definition controls when a statute uses the term.
Modern corpus connections. In contemporary legal research, donation most frequently appears in three contexts: charitable giving and tax law (where the I.R.C. definition of "charitable contribution" governs deductibility), organ and tissue donation (governed by the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act as adopted by individual states), and reproductive technology law (sperm, egg, and embryo donation, where "donation" is often a legal fiction masking a commercial transaction with elaborate contractual structure).
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Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries agree on the skeleton: donation is a gift, voluntary and without consideration. Beyond that, they diverge in emphasis in revealing ways.
Black's and Burrill's are nearly identical, prioritizing the ecclesiastical law meaning and treating it as the primary legal sense. This reflects the English common law inheritance; both dictionaries were oriented toward practitioners navigating a legal system still shaped by church law doctrines. Neither dictionary develops the mortis causa form at any length under this headword, instead directing readers to DONATIO.
Bouvier's dispenses with the headword entirely, redirecting to DONATIO — the Latin form — where the full treatment lives. This is a common Bouvier pattern: Latin forms carry the doctrinal weight, and English headwords serve as cross-references. Researchers using Bouvier's must follow the Latin entries to access substantive content.
Anderson's Dictionary of Law is the outlier. It defines donation almost entirely through the mortis causa lens, emphasizing the conditional nature, the delivery requirement, and the automatic revocation on recovery. This focus reflects Anderson's American practice orientation and the period's active litigation over deathbed gifts in equity. Anderson captures what the other dictionaries bury or omit.
Rapalje & Lawrence provides the most useful research scaffolding: case citations for the term's statutory interpretation and the Coke maxim distinguishing perfected from incipient gifts. These are the tools practitioners actually needed.
What the historical sources collectively miss: they say nothing about charitable donations in the tax sense, nothing about organ donation, and nothing about reproductive donation — all of which now dominate the term's legal footprint. Researchers using these dictionaries for contemporary questions will find the headword unhelpful and must turn to statutory and regulatory sources.
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Jurisdictional Note
The law of donation mortis causa varies by state, particularly regarding whether real property can be transferred this way and what constitutes sufficient delivery. The Uniform Anatomical Gift Act, adopted in some form across all U.S. jurisdictions, governs organ and tissue donation and uses "donation" as a defined term of art. Charitable donation deductibility is governed by federal tax law regardless of state law characterization.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Assisted Reproduction — Donor Gametes (Sperm, Egg, and Embryo Donation), The Law Mind Family Law Encyclopedia. Note that in reproductive technology law, "donation" frequently describes transactions that involve compensation and detailed contractual arrangements — the term's common-law meaning as a gratuitous transfer does not map cleanly onto this usage.
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