Definition
Latin: "last will." A term from Roman and old English law denoting the final testamentary disposition of a person's estate — what modern law calls a will or last will and testament. *Ultima voluntas* refers specifically to the instrument or expressed intention by which a person directs the distribution of property at death. The phrase emphasizes both the finality of the act (last) and the volitional character of the disposition (will).
The term carries with it a foundational maxim of testamentary construction: *ultima voluntas testatoris est perimplenda secundum veram intentionem suam* — the last will of a testator is to be fulfilled according to his true intention. This principle, recorded in Coke on Littleton, anchored the interpretive tradition that courts must give effect to the testator's actual intent rather than the bare words of the instrument, a rule that remains central to will construction today.
Common Confusion
*Ultima voluntas* should not be confused with *nuncupative will* (an oral last will) or with the distinct Roman law category of *codicil*. In Roman law, *ultima voluntas* could technically encompass codicils and certain other mortis causa dispositions, but in English legal usage the term is effectively coextensive with "last will and testament" as a formal instrument. Researchers reading across Roman and English sources should be alert to this narrowing.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering *ultima voluntas* in historical legal sources — writs, plea rolls, register entries, and early treatise literature — should treat it as a direct synonym for "last will" in the modern sense, but with important nuance. In medieval and early modern English practice, "will" and "testament" were technically distinct: a testament governed personal property, while a will (or devise) governed real property. *Ultima voluntas* sometimes served as a unifying phrase that encompassed both, which can affect how you read instruments from periods when that distinction was still legally operative.
The maxim attached to the term (*perimplenda secundum veram intentionem suam*) is historically significant for corpus research because it is the ancestor of the modern intent-based canon of testamentary construction. When historical sources invoke *ultima voluntas* alongside discussion of interpretation, they are almost always engaging with this tension between literal text and true intention — a debate that generated substantial treatise literature from Swinburne forward.
In the *Registrum Omnium Brevium* (Reg. Orig.), the phrase appears in standard writ forms, signaling that researchers working through early English register materials will find it as formulaic language rather than substantive legal argument. Distinguish these uses from the same phrase appearing in treatise or Year Book contexts, where it carries fuller doctrinal weight.
Because *ultima voluntas* belongs firmly to the Latin law vocabulary of pre-modern English practice, it is largely absent from American legal sources after the early nineteenth century. If it appears in American materials, expect it in a historical, comparative, or ecclesiastical law context.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the primary entry in the Law Mind corpus. Burrill traces the phrase to its operation in old English law, citing the *Registrum Originale* (Reg. Orig. 244b) for the formulaic use in testamentary writs and Coke on Littleton (Co. Litt. 322b) for the associated maxim. Burrill begins to reproduce Littleton's parallel formulation in Law French — *La volunte de devisour, fait pur son testament, serra* — which, though the entry is cut off in the available source, points toward Littleton's treatment of the devisor's intent as the governing principle in testamentary construction.
What historical dictionaries at this register generally do not address is the theological dimension of *ultima voluntas* in its pre-Reformation English context. Wills were proved in ecclesiastical courts, and the concept of honoring the testator's last intention carried moral and sacramental connotations alongside its legal ones — a dimension relevant to historians of law but rarely surfaced in doctrinal dictionaries.
No meaningful divergence exists among historical sources on the core meaning of the phrase. Its content is stable: last will, testator's final intention, to be honored as expressed.