Definition
Durante minore etate (Latin: "during the minority") is a phrase describing the period in which a person is under the legal age of majority and therefore subject to legal incapacity. In practice, the phrase is most commonly encountered in the law of decedents' estates, where it names a specific form of limited administration granted when an executor named in a will is a minor. Because a minor cannot legally serve as executor, a court appoints an administrator durante minore etate to manage the estate on the named executor's behalf until the executor reaches the age of majority, at which point the administration terminates and the executor may qualify and serve.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encounter durante minore etate almost exclusively in two contexts: (1) historical treatises and court records concerning the administration of decedents' estates, and (2) broad treatments of infant (minor) incapacity in equity and common law. The phrase is Latin legal shorthand and appears in its contracted or abbreviated form — durante min. æt. — in older English and American court documents, probate records, and chancery materials. Researchers working with colonial American or early republic probate records should watch for variant spellings (ætate, etate, aetate) and the abbreviation.
The phrase connects to a wider cluster of durante phrases used to describe temporary or contingent grants of probate administration: durante absentia (during absence), durante beneplacito (during good pleasure), and durante lite (during litigation). Understanding the durante minore etate grant requires recognizing that it is not a full grant of administration but a limited, time-bounded commission that expires by operation of law when the named executor comes of age. Researchers tracing the history of a particular estate administration should note whether the record shows a subsequent qualification by the named executor after majority, which would signal that an earlier durante minore etate grant likely exists.
The underlying doctrine of infant incapacity also shapes the research picture. Historical sources treat a minor's inability to serve as executor as part of the broader common law rule that infants may not bind themselves by contract or assume fiduciary duties, with narrow exceptions for contracts for necessaries. The estate administration context is one place where that incapacity has a named, procedural remedy rather than simply voiding the appointment.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's Law Dictionary provides the core entry and is the primary American authority for this phrase. Bouvier frames the term around two propositions: first, the general rule that an infant cannot enter into binding contracts during minority (with the exception of contracts for the infant's benefit); and second, the specific probate remedy — appointment of an administrator durante minore etate — when a named executor is an infant. The cross-reference to 2 Bouvier, Inst. n. 1555 points to Bouvier's own Institutes of American Law, a treatise that elaborates the incapacity doctrine in greater detail.
No entry appears in Black's Law Dictionary (earlier editions) under this precise phrase, though Black treats the component concepts (minority, administration durante absentia) separately. English sources, including Burn's Ecclesiastical Law and Williams on Executors, treat durante minore etate administration as an established ecclesiastical and common law remedy with roots in English probate practice long before American codification. Bouvier's entry, while brief, accurately captures the operative rule and its procedural consequence.
What historical dictionaries collectively understate is the procedural mechanics: how the durante minore etate administrator's authority is formally terminated, what happens if the named executor dies before reaching majority, and how the grant interacts with residuary administration. These questions require resort to treatise literature and primary probate records rather than dictionary sources alone.
Jurisdictional Note
The doctrine is rooted in English ecclesiastical and common law probate practice and was received into American law generally. Modern American probate codes have largely displaced the Latin terminology, but the underlying rule — that a minor named as executor cannot qualify until reaching majority, and that an interim administrator may be appointed — persists in most jurisdictions, often under statutory language rather than the Latin phrase.