legatary

Legatary is an English term that appears in historical and some legal contexts to describe matters related to legacies or to a person who receives a legacy. As a noun, legatary can refer to a legatee—the beneficiary named in a will—though legatee is the more common and current term. As an adjective, legatary describes things connected with legacies, bequests, or testamentary provisions.

In modern usage, legatary is largely considered archaic or literary. Contemporary legal drafting and most scholarly writing prefer legatee for the beneficiary and legacy or bequest for the gift itself. When legatary appears today, it is typically in discussions of historical documents, older statutes, or studies of the evolution of testamentary language. Its presence in modern texts is usually explanatory or quotation-based rather than functional in contemporary law.

Etymology traces legatary to the same broad family of words connected with legates and legation, which in turn derive from Latin roots associated with sending or delegating. The connection to bequests is mediated through related terms such as legacy and legatum, but legatary itself is a specialized, largely obsolete form that survives mainly in historical or philological contexts rather than active legal practice.

See also: legatee, legacy, bequest, testament, will, inheritance.