Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
🧑‍⚖️ A person who chooses 📜 A person with legal power
appointer

appointer

7.8
A person who has the legal right to decide who gets property from a will or trust
  • noun
  • /əˈpɔɪntər/
  • Jargon
: designador
  • The appointer named her three children as the main beneficiaries of the trust.

Examples

  • Only the appointer can decide how the assets will be distributed among the heirs.

  • The appointer has the final say in the distribution of assets.

  • The court confirmed that the appointer had acted within his legal rights.

  • An appointer can be a family member or a trusted friend.

  • The appointer specified that all decisions regarding the estate should be made by her attorney.

  • As the appointer, he had the responsibility to ensure that the wishes of the deceased were fulfilled.

  • Every appointer has the power to modify the terms of the trust if necessary.

Surface Forms

appointer singular
appointers plural

Morphology

appointer = appoint (semi-transparent) = appoint + er

Formed by the productive agentive suffix '-er', but the cited sense is a specialized legal role (authority under a will/trust) which may not be predictable to all learners from the base verb alone.

Etymology

Appointer comes from the verb appoint, from an old Latin root that means 'to place', a root you also find in position. That's why an appointer can be the person who has the power to 'place' people or gifts in a will or trust — in other words, the person who chooses who will receive the property.