Definition
A legatee is a person who receives a legacy — a gift of personal property made by will. The term derives from the law of testamentary succession and refers specifically to the beneficiary named to receive a bequest under a decedent's will, as distinguished from an heir who takes by intestate succession.
In practice, the term is often used broadly to mean any testamentary beneficiary, whether the gift is of personal property, real property, or a share of the estate. Strict historical usage confined legatee to personal property and reserved devisee for real property, but modern usage and many modern statutes have collapsed this distinction.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): One who receives a legacy (inheritance).
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): One to whom a legacy is bequeathed.
The common meaning tracks the legal meaning closely enough that no major gap exists. The one nuance worth noting: ordinary usage treats legatee and heir as near-synonyms, while legal usage keeps them distinct — an heir takes by operation of law when there is no will; a legatee takes by the express terms of one.
Common Confusion
LEGATEE vs. DEVISEE: The traditional distinction is that a legatee receives personal property (a bequest), while a devisee receives real property (a devise). This line was meaningful under older common law when the treatment of personal and real property at death diverged sharply. Modern statutes in most U.S. jurisdictions and the Uniform Probate Code have largely merged the categories, using legatee or beneficiary to cover all testamentary gifts. Researchers working in pre-twentieth-century sources must keep the distinction in view; courts and treatise writers in that period used the terms precisely, and conflating them can produce misreadings of historical instruments and opinions.
LEGATEE vs. HEIR: An heir is a person entitled to take under intestacy — by statute, in the absence of a will. A legatee takes under a will. A person can be both (named in the will and also an heir at law), but the concepts are legally independent. Confusion between the two appears in lay drafting of wills and occasionally in older judicial opinions that use heir loosely.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Residuary legatee: The person to whom the testator leaves the residue of the estate — what remains after specific bequests, debts, taxes, and costs of administration are satisfied. The residuary clause is one of the most practically significant provisions in a will; the residuary legatee often receives the bulk of the estate. Where no residuary clause exists or it fails, the residue passes by intestacy.
Specific legatee: The beneficiary of a specific legacy — an identified, particular item of property (e.g., "my 1962 Steinway piano to my daughter"). Specific legacies are subject to ademption if the property no longer exists in the estate at death.
General legatee: The beneficiary of a general legacy, typically a sum of money payable from the general estate assets rather than from a specific fund or item.
Demonstrative legatee: The beneficiary of a legacy that is general in character but directed to be paid from a specified source, with a fallback to the general estate if that source is insufficient.
Why It Matters in Research
The legatee/devisee distinction is a structural fault line in historical probate and wills research. Sources from before the mid-twentieth century — and even many mid-century state codes — maintain the split. A historical case discussing a legatee's rights may be entirely inapplicable to a dispute involving land. When reading older wills, opinions, or statutes, always confirm which category of property is in play before assuming a rule stated for legatees carries over to devisees.
The Bouvier's note is practically important: courts have shown willingness to read legatee expansively — treating it as equivalent to distributee — when strict construction would cause the testator's dispositive scheme to fail entirely for want of certainty. This interpretive flexibility appears in will construction cases and should alert researchers not to assume that a historical court's use of the term tracks technical doctrine.
Corpus researchers should also note that residuary legatee is a term of art with substantial case law around it. Questions of lapsed gifts, anti-lapse statutes, and the effect of a residuary legatee predeceasing the testator generate a distinct body of authority — connected to legatee but requiring its own research path.
When working with estate administration materials, legatee connects naturally to legacy, bequest, devise, and the procedural law governing probate. Tax research adds another layer: the income tax and estate tax treatment of bequests turns on characterization of what was received and from what kind of transfer.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries are in agreement on the core definition — a legatee is the person to whom a legacy is given — and the consistency across Black's (both editions), Anderson's, Bouvier's, and Burrill's on this point reflects settled doctrine rather than any contested development.
Burrill's is the most textually precise, cross-referencing Blackstone's Commentaries (2 Bl. Com. 512) and noting that the term is sometimes used in the sense of devisee, citing 15 East, 505 — an acknowledgment that even historical courts occasionally blurred the personal/real property line.
Bouvier's adds the most analytical value. The observation that courts will apply the popular rather than technical meaning of legatee — reading it as distributee when the alternative is total failure of the testator's scheme — reflects a real interpretive doctrine and is not merely a definitional note. This is the kind of entry-level signal in a dictionary that points researchers toward a line of will construction cases.
Black's 2nd edition defines residuary legatee with three case citations and offers the most developed treatment among the historical sources. The first edition and Anderson's add nothing beyond the core definition.
None of the historical sources address the modern statutory merger of legatee and devisee, which postdates all of them. Researchers relying solely on these dictionaries will get accurate doctrine for their period but should not assume the legatee/devisee distinction survives in the jurisdiction being researched.
Jurisdictional Note
Most U.S. jurisdictions following the Uniform Probate Code have abandoned or substantially softened the legatee/devisee distinction, using legatee or beneficiary for all testamentary gifts. Several states retain the traditional vocabulary by statute or in their court practice. Civil law jurisdictions use legatee in translation but organize succession rights differently, with forced heirship rules that constrain what a legatee can receive.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Wills and Testamentary Succession; Intestacy and Heirship; Probate Administration