Definition
A Latin term from the civil law meaning "intestate" — that is, dying without a valid will. A person described as dying intestato left no testamentary instrument to govern the disposition of their estate, triggering the operation of intestate succession laws. The term is substantively equivalent to the English "intestate" and functions as its direct Latin antecedent in civil law sources and older legal scholarship.
Common Confusion
Intestato should not be confused with intestatus, though both terms carry the same core meaning. Intestatus is the more commonly encountered Latin form in classical Roman law texts and digests. Intestato appears chiefly as an adverbial or ablative form — describing the condition or manner of dying (dying "intestato," i.e., in an intestate state) — while intestatus functions as a noun or adjective describing the person. Researchers encountering either form in historical sources are looking at the same underlying concept.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in historical and civil law sources. Researchers will encounter intestato in pre-twentieth-century legal dictionaries, treatises drawing on Roman law foundations, and scholarship bridging civil law and common law traditions. It is not a term of art in modern American or English common law practice, where "intestate" fully displaces it.
The practical research value of intestato is as a gateway term: finding it in a primary or secondary source signals civil law influence or a historical comparative law context. Louisiana researchers, in particular, may encounter the term in early Louisiana legal materials drawing on French and Spanish civil law heritage, where Latin civil law terminology persisted longer than in common law jurisdictions.
Because historical dictionaries define intestato tersely — consistently as simply "intestate; without a will" — the term rarely carries hidden doctrinal complexity. The risk in research is not misreading its meaning but failing to connect it to the broader intestate succession framework that governs what happens when a person dies intestato.
Historical Dictionary Support
The four source dictionaries are unanimous and nearly identical in their treatment. Bouvier defines it as "intestate; without a will" with a citation to Calvinus's Lexicon Juridicum. Burrill adds a reference to Digest 50.17.7, grounding the term in Roman law. Both Black's editions replicate this consensus without expansion.
What the historical sources do not address — because they function as translation glossaries for Latin terms rather than doctrinal treatises — is any substantive development of the intestate succession rules triggered by dying intestato. For that analysis, researchers must move to the entries under "Intestate" and "Intestate Succession" in these same dictionaries, or to the civil law treatises the dictionary entries point toward.
The Calvinus citation (Calvini Lexicon Juridicum, a standard civil law reference dictionary) appearing in both Bouvier and Burrill is a useful provenance marker: it confirms the term's civilian pedigree rather than its origin in English common law sources.
Jurisdictional Note
As a Latin civil law term, intestato has no jurisdiction-specific legal meaning in modern American practice. Its relevance is greatest in Louisiana and in any jurisdiction where historical research intersects with Spanish, French, or Roman law sources. In common law jurisdictions, the English "intestate" is the operative term.