Definition
One who makes a will and leaves legacies to others. The legator is the testifying party — the person who, at death, transmits personal property to named recipients (legatees) by testamentary instrument. The term is functionally synonymous with testator in most modern legal usage, though legator carries a narrower technical connotation: it emphasizes the act of bequeathing specific legacies rather than the broader role of disposing of an entire estate.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A testator; also, a donor.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "A testator; one who bequeaths a legacy." (Dryden cited as literary source.)
Common and legal meaning are closely aligned here, but the Wiktionary gloss of "donor" slightly overstates the term's reach. In legal usage, legator is confined to the testamentary context — a person disposing of property by will. An inter vivos donor is not a legator.
Common Confusion
LEGATOR vs. TESTATOR: These terms overlap substantially but are not interchangeable in precise usage. Testator refers to any person who executes a valid will, regardless of whether specific legacies are named. Legator emphasizes the bequest of legacies specifically and appears most often in the civil law tradition and in older common law texts. In modern American practice, testator has largely displaced legator in statutory and judicial language.
LEGATOR vs. LEGATEE: The mirror-image confusion. The legator gives; the legatee receives. The -or/-ee suffix distinction follows standard legal convention (like grantor/grantee, lessor/lessee), but researchers encountering older texts should watch for variant spellings and context to confirm which party is meant.
Why It Matters in Research
Legator is a term of diminishing frequency in American legal materials. Researchers working in contemporary statutes, court opinions, or uniform acts (such as the Uniform Probate Code) will rarely encounter it — testator is the operative term in those sources. Legator appears with greater regularity in civil law jurisdictions, ecclesiastical law materials, and English equity texts predating the nineteenth century. Researchers using Law Mind's historical corpus should expect legator to surface in older treatises on wills and succession, particularly those drawing from Roman law or civilian tradition.
A secondary research trap: the term appears in some sources as a near-synonym for devisor, though the distinction matters. Devisor traditionally refers to one who disposes of real property by will; legator refers to the disposition of personal property by legacy. This real/personal property distinction was legally significant in common law jurisdictions well into the nineteenth century and affects how older materials are organized and indexed. Searching only legator in historical sources may miss relevant entries filed under devisor or testator depending on the property type at issue.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) defines legator simply as "one who makes a will, and leaves legacies" — a compact definition that captures the core meaning without elaboration. Notably, the first edition entry reproduced in the source material strays entirely from legator, instead discussing legalis and legality, suggesting indexing inconsistency in the historical dictionary corpus. Researchers relying on the first edition should not assume that proximity of entries reflects conceptual relationship.
Webster's 1913 confirms that the term carried the same meaning in general literary and legal usage, citing Dryden — a reminder that legator was sufficiently current in the early modern period to appear in non-legal prose. The Wiktionary addition of "donor" as a secondary meaning likely reflects civilian or ecclesiastical usage where the term's scope was broader, but that usage is peripheral to Anglo-American legal research.
Neither dictionary entry addresses the historical real/personal property distinction or the civil law lineage of the term, which are the most practically significant dimensions for corpus researchers.
Jurisdictional Note
Civil law jurisdictions (Louisiana, Quebec, and jurisdictions drawing from Roman law traditions) use legator and legatee as primary terms in succession law, where the civil law structure of universal legatees, particular legatees, and residuary legatees gives the vocabulary more operational significance than in common law states. In common law jurisdictions, the term is largely archaic in active legal practice.