Definition
"Well and truly administer according to law" is a phrase of obligation found in administrator's bonds and similar fiduciary instruments. It constitutes the operative promise by which an administrator of a decedent's estate binds himself — and his sureties — to perform the duties of administration faithfully and in conformity with the requirements of law. The phrase functions as a term of art within the bond itself: it is not merely aspirational language but the standard against which breach of the bond is measured.
The full phrase typically appears as a condition in the penal bond required before letters of administration are granted. If the administrator performs the enumerated duties — collecting assets, paying debts, distributing the estate to rightful heirs or legatees, and rendering proper accounts — the bond is discharged. Failure to do any of these things "according to law" renders the bond forfeit and exposes both the administrator and the sureties to liability.
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Common Language
The individual words present no difficulty in ordinary English: "well and truly" is an intensifying phrase meaning faithfully and correctly; "administer" means to manage or carry out; "according" means in conformity with. None of these words carries a shifted legal meaning in isolation.
The legal significance lies not in any single word but in the phrase as a whole unit functioning as a term of art within bond instruments. A reader encountering this language in a historical document who treats it as loose descriptive language — rather than as the operative condition on which the bond turns — will misread its legal force entirely.
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Why It Matters in Research
This phrase is almost exclusively encountered in two contexts within the Law Mind corpus: (1) probate and surrogate court records containing administrator's bonds, and (2) reported decisions construing those bonds when an administrator is alleged to have breached them.
Researchers working with historical estate records must understand that "well and truly administer according to law" is the pivotal conditional clause. The entire question of surety liability — and much of the litigation over administrator's bonds — turns on what "according to law" required in a given jurisdiction at a given time. The standard was not uniform: statutory duties imposed on administrators varied by state and changed over time, meaning that the same phrase could carry different operational content depending on jurisdiction and era.
A second research trap: historical cases frequently abbreviate the phrase, referring simply to the "condition of the bond" without quoting it. Researchers who do not recognize the full phrase may fail to connect abbreviated judicial shorthand to the underlying instrument language.
The Rapalje & Lawrence citation to 1 Littell (Kentucky) 93, 100 and 8 Barnwell & Cresswell 151, 159 points researchers toward early American and English authority on the construction of this bond condition. These are real and significant early sources: the Littell citation is from Kentucky's early reports (circa 1822), and the Barnwell & Cresswell citation is from English King's Bench (circa 1827). Both address what conduct satisfies — or defeats — the bond condition.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence treat this phrase as a recognized unit, indexing it under the administrator's bond context with the compressed entry "TO LAW" — meaning "according to law." This compression is itself instructive: the editors understood that the legally operative portion of the phrase was the "according to law" standard, and they indexed accordingly. Researchers using Rapalje & Lawrence should search under both the full phrase and the "to law" cross-reference.
No other standard historical legal dictionaries (Bouvier, Black's first or second editions, Burrill) carry a dedicated entry for this phrase, though Bouvier's treatment of "Administrator" and "Bond" provides background context. The absence of broader dictionary coverage reflects the phrase's nature: it is instrument language rather than a freestanding legal concept, and its meaning was understood to be supplied by the surrounding law of administration rather than by the phrase itself.
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Jurisdictional Note
The content of the "according to law" standard varied materially across American states, as each state's probate statutes defined the duties of administrators differently. Researchers should identify the controlling probate statute of the relevant jurisdiction and period before drawing conclusions from cases decided elsewhere.
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