Definition
A woman appointed by a testator in a will to carry out the terms of that will after death. The executrix administers the decedent's estate, gathers assets, pays debts and taxes, and distributes the remainder to beneficiaries — the same role and responsibilities as an executor, distinguished only by the feminine grammatical form of the title.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A female executor; a woman appointed to execute a will.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A woman exercising the functions of an executor.
The common and legal meanings are functionally identical here. The only note worth making is practical: modern usage has largely abandoned the gendered distinction. Most contemporary statutes, court rules, and practitioners use executor regardless of the appointee's gender. A researcher encountering executrix in a historical document should read it as executor in all legal respects.
Common Confusion
EXECUTRIX vs. ADMINISTRATRIX: An executrix is appointed by the testator in a valid will. An administratrix is appointed by a court when the decedent died intestate (without a will), or when no valid will exists, or when the named executrix cannot or will not serve. The distinction tracks the same executor/administrator divide and carries the same legal consequences — including differences in bond requirements, powers, and the court's supervisory role. Historical sources frequently cross-reference the two terms; researchers should not treat them as interchangeable.
EXECUTRIX vs. EXECUTOR: No legal distinction in powers, duties, or liabilities. The difference is purely grammatical and gendered. Modern statutory law and most contemporary courts have abandoned executrix entirely in favor of the gender-neutral executor.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in probate records, estate litigation, and wills before the mid-twentieth century will encounter executrix regularly. Several research traps apply.
First, terminology in historical sources is not standardized. Burrill's notes that older English books sometimes rendered the term as executress rather than executrix. Both forms refer to the same role. A full-text corpus search for one form may miss the other.
Second, the transition away from gendered titles happened unevenly across jurisdictions and over an extended period. Some states retained executrix in their probate codes well into the latter half of the twentieth century; others dropped it earlier. A document from 1950 may use executrix where a document from 1990 in the same jurisdiction uses executor to refer to a woman in the identical role.
Third, capacity questions historically attached to the gender of the appointee in ways that no longer apply. At common law and under early American statutes, a married woman's capacity to serve as executrix was sometimes limited by her coverture status — she might need her husband's concurrence or face restrictions a male executor would not. Researchers analyzing historical estate disputes involving female executors should be alert to this dimension; it does not appear in the dictionary definitions themselves but was a live issue in the case law.
Fourth, for Scotch law researchers: Black's 2nd Edition appends a note on executry — the movable estate of a person dying in Scotland, distributed by an executor. This is a distinct concept. The proximity of executrix and executry in the historical dictionaries has caused occasional confusion in cross-border estate research.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical sources are in complete agreement on the core definition. Bouvier, Black's (both editions), Rapalje & Lawrence, and Burrill all define executrix identically: a woman appointed by will to execute that will. There is no substantive divergence among the dictionaries on meaning, powers, or legal status.
Burrill's is the most historically granular, noting the older English form executress and citing to the Year Books. This is useful for researchers working in medieval or early modern English sources, where executrix had not yet become the settled form.
Black's 2nd Edition is the only source among the five to note executry (the Scots law concept), placing it immediately after the executrix entry. Researchers should be careful not to conflate the two terms when reading that edition.
What the historical sources largely omit is the coverture question — the conditions under which a married woman could validly serve and what limitations applied. That gap reflects the dictionaries' tendency to define the role without surveying its practical constraints. Researchers needing the common-law rules on a married woman's capacity as executrix will need to go beyond these dictionary definitions to treatises on domestic relations and probate practice.
Jurisdictional Note
Most U.S. jurisdictions have replaced executrix with the gender-neutral executor in their probate codes, typically through statutory revision in the latter twentieth century. The Uniform Probate Code uses executor without gendered variants. Researchers should verify whether a specific state's historical statutes used executrix, as the term may appear in older wills, letters testamentary, and court orders and will control the interpretation of documents from that era.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Executor and Estate Administration; Probate and the Proving of Wills; Coverture and the Legal Capacity of Married Women.