14-1201

14-1201. Definitions

In this title, unless the context otherwise requires:

1. "Agent" includes an attorney-in-fact under a durable or nondurable power of
attorney, a person who is authorized to make decisions concerning another person's health
care and a person who is authorized to make decisions for another person under a natural
death act.

2. "Application" means a written request to the registrar for an order of informal
probate or appointment under chapter 3, article 3 of this title.

3. "Beneficiary", as it relates to a trust beneficiary, includes a person who has
any present or future interest, vested or contingent, and also includes the owner of an
interest by assignment or other transfer. As it relates to a charitable trust,
beneficiary includes any person entitled to enforce the trust. As it relates to a
beneficiary of a beneficiary designation, beneficiary refers to a beneficiary of an
insurance or annuity policy, an account with pay on death designation, a security
registered in beneficiary form or a pension, profit sharing, retirement or similar
benefit plan, or any other nonprobate transfer at death. As it relates to a beneficiary
designated in a governing instrument, beneficiary includes a grantee of a deed, a
devisee, a trust beneficiary, a beneficiary of a beneficiary designation, a donee,
appointee or taker in default of a power of appointment and a person in whose favor a
power of attorney or a power held in any person, fiduciary or representative capacity is
exercised.

4. "Beneficiary designation" refers to a governing instrument naming a beneficiary
of an insurance or annuity policy, of an account with pay on death designation, of a
security registered in beneficiary form or of a pension, profit sharing, retirement or
similar benefit plan, or any other nonprobate transfer at death.

5. "Child" includes a person who is entitled to take as a child under this title by
intestate succession from the parent whose relationship is involved. Child excludes a
person who is only a stepchild, a foster child, a grandchild or a more remote descendant.

6. "Claims", in respect to estates of decedents and protected persons, includes
liabilities of the decedent or the protected person, whether arising in contract, in tort
or otherwise, and liabilities of the estate that arise at or after the death of the
decedent or after the appointment of a conservator, including funeral expenses and
expenses of administration. Claims do not include estate or inheritance taxes or demands
or disputes regarding title of a decedent or a protected person to specific assets
alleged to be included in the estate.

7. "Community property" means that property of a husband and wife that is acquired
during the marriage and that is community property as prescribed in section 25-211.

8. "Conservator" means a person who is appointed by a court to manage the estate of
a protected person.

9. "Court" means the superior court.

10. "Dependent child" means a minor child who the decedent was obligated to support
or an adult child who was in fact being supported by the decedent at the time of the
decedent's death.

11. "Descendant" means all of the decedent's descendants of all generations, with
the relationship of parent and child at each generation.

12. "Devise", when used as a noun, means a testamentary disposition of real or
personal property and, when used as a verb, means to dispose of real or personal property
by will.

13. "Devisee" means a person designated in a will to receive a devise. For the
purposes of chapter 3 of this title, in the case of a devise to an existing trust or
trustee, or to a trustee on trust described by will, the trust or trustee is the devisee
and the beneficiaries are not devisees.

14. "Disability" means cause for a protective order as described in section 14-5401.

15. "Distributee" means any person who has received property of a decedent from that
person's personal representative other than as a creditor or purchaser. Distributee
includes a testamentary trustee only to the extent of distributed assets or increment
that remains in that person's hands. A beneficiary of a testamentary trust to whom the
trustee has distributed property received from a personal representative is a distributee
of the personal representative. For the purposes of this paragraph, "testamentary
trustee" includes a trustee to whom assets are transferred by will, to the extent of the
devised assets.

16. "Estate" includes the property of the decedent, trust or other person whose
affairs are subject to this title as originally constituted and as it exists from time to
time during administration. As it relates to a spouse, the estate includes only the
separate property and the share of the community property belonging to the decedent or
person whose affairs are subject to this title.

17. "Exempt property" means that property of a decedent's estate that is described
in section 14-2403.

18. "Fiduciary" includes a personal representative, guardian, conservator and
trustee.

19. "Foreign personal representative" means a personal representative appointed by
another jurisdiction.

20. "Formal proceedings" means proceedings conducted before a judge with notice to
interested persons.

21. "Governing instrument" means a deed, will, trust, insurance or annuity policy,
account with pay on death designation, security registered in beneficiary form, pension,
profit sharing, retirement or similar benefit plan, instrument creating or exercising a
power of appointment or a power of attorney or a dispositive, appointive or nominative
instrument of any similar type.

22. "Guardian" means a person who has qualified as a guardian of a minor or
incapacitated person pursuant to testamentary or court appointment but excludes a person
who is merely a guardian ad litem.

23. "Heirs", except as controlled by section 14-2711, means persons, including the
surviving spouse and the state, who are entitled under the statutes of intestate
succession to the property of a decedent.

24. "Incapacitated person" has the same meaning prescribed in section 14-5101.

25. "Informal proceedings" means those proceedings conducted without notice to
interested persons by an officer of the court acting as a registrar for probate of a will
or appointment of a personal representative.

26. "Interested person" includes any trustee, heir, devisee, child, spouse,
creditor, beneficiary, person holding a power of appointment and other person who has a
property right in or claim against a trust estate or the estate of a decedent, ward or
protected person. Interested person also includes a person who has priority for
appointment as personal representative and other fiduciaries representing interested
persons. Interested person, as the term relates to particular persons, may vary from time
to time and must be determined according to the particular purposes of, and matter
involved in, any proceeding.

27. "Issue" of a person means descendant as defined in this section.

28. "Joint tenants with the right of survivorship" and "community property with the
right of survivorship" includes co-owners of property held under circumstances that
entitle one or more to the whole of the property on the death of the other or others but
excludes forms of co-ownership registration in which the underlying ownership of each
party is in proportion to that party's contribution.

29. "Lease" includes any oil, gas or other mineral lease.

30. "Letters" includes letters testamentary, letters of guardianship, letters of
administration and letters of conservatorship.

31. "Minor" means a person who is under eighteen years of age.

32. "Mortgage" means any conveyance, agreement or arrangement in which property is
encumbered or used as security. Mortgage does not include leases or easements.

33. "Nonresident decedent" means a decedent who was domiciled in another
jurisdiction at the time of the decedent's death.

34. "Organization" means a corporation, limited liability company, business trust,
estate, trust, partnership, joint venture, association, government or governmental
subdivision or agency or any other legal or commercial entity.

35. "Parent" includes any person entitled to take, or who would be entitled to take
if the child died without a will, as a parent under this title by intestate succession
from the child whose relationship is in question and excludes any person who is only a
stepparent, foster parent or grandparent.

36. "Payor" means a trustee, insurer, business entity, employer, government,
governmental agency or subdivision or any other person who is authorized or obligated by
law or a governing instrument to make payments.

37. "Person" means an individual or an organization.

38. "Personal representative" includes executor, administrator, successor personal
representative, special administrator and persons who perform substantially the same
function under the law governing their status. A general personal representative excludes
a special administrator.

39. "Petition" means a written request to the court for an order after notice.

40. "Proceeding" includes action at law and suit in equity.

41. "Property" has the same meaning prescribed in section 14-10103.

42. "Protected person" has the same meaning prescribed in section 14-5101.

43. "Protective proceeding" has the same meaning prescribed in section 14-5101.

44. "Registrar" means the official of the court designated to perform the functions
of registrar as provided in section 14-1307.

45. "Security" includes any note, stock, treasury stock, bond, debenture, evidence
of indebtedness, certificate of interest or participation in an oil, gas or mining title
or lease or in payments out of production under that title or lease, collateral trust
certificate, transferable share or voting trust certificate and, in general, includes any
interest or instrument commonly known as a security, or any certificate of interest or
participation, any temporary or interim certificate, receipt or certificate of deposit
for, or any warrant or right to subscribe to or purchase, any of these securities.

46. "Separate property" means that property of a husband or wife that is the
spouse's separate property as defined in section 25-213.

47. "Settlement", in reference to a decedent's estate, includes the full process of
administration, distribution and closing.

48. "Special administrator" means a personal representative as described by sections
14-3614 through 14-3618.

49. "State" has the same meaning prescribed in section 14-10103.

50. "Successor personal representative" means a personal representative, other than
a special administrator, who is appointed to succeed a previously appointed personal
representative.

51. "Successors" means persons, other than creditors, who are entitled to property
of a decedent under a will or this title.

52. "Supervised administration" refers to the proceedings described in chapter 3,
article 5 of this title.

53. "Survive" means that a person has neither predeceased an event, including the
death of another person, nor is deemed to have predeceased an event under section 14-2104
or 14-2702.

54. "Testacy proceeding" means a proceeding to establish a will or determine
intestacy.

55. "Testator" includes a person of either sex.

56. "Trust" includes an express trust, private or charitable, with any additions,
wherever and however created. Trust also includes a trust created or determined by
judgment or decree under which the trust is to be administered in the manner of an
express trust. Trust excludes other constructive trusts and excludes resulting trusts,
conservatorship, personal representatives, trust accounts, custodial arrangements
pursuant to chapter 7, article 7 of this title, business trusts providing for
certificates to be issued to beneficiaries, common trust funds, voting trusts, security
arrangements, liquidation trusts and trusts for the primary purpose of paying debts,
dividends, interest, salaries, wages, profits, pensions or employee benefits of any kind,
trusts created by a city or town for the payment of medical insurance, health care
benefits or expenses, long-term or short-term disability, self insurance reserves and
similar programs administered by a city or town, legal defense trusts and any arrangement
under which a person is nominee or escrowee for another.

57. "Trustee" includes an original, additional or successor trustee, whether or not
appointed or confirmed by court.

58. "Ward" has the same meaning prescribed in section 14-5101.

59. "Will" includes a codicil and any testamentary instrument that merely appoints
an executor, revokes or revises another will, nominates a guardian or expressly excludes
or limits the right of an individual or class to succeed to property of the decedent
passing by intestate succession.