Legal Lingo

Elvis Presley's will contains the phrase "choses in action."

I hereby expressly authorize my Executor and my Trustee, respectively and successively, to permit any beneficiary of any and all trusts created hereunder to enjoy in specie the use or benefit of any household goods, chattels, or other tangible personal property (exclusive of choses in action, cash, stocks, bonds or other securities) which either my Executor or my Trustees may receive in kind....

Choses? A misspelling or typographical error? After all, his will contains 'repsonsibilities' instead of 'responsibilities, a clear typographical error that exists in the versions floating around the internet, and may also be in the original typescript.

No, "choses" it is, and rightfully so. 'Chose' is French for thing, and the singular appears in the judgment in the case of Sir Charles Clore which was heard in Jersey:

The executors put the matter in an entirely different way. They say that from the time of the declaration of trust and the conveyance of the Guy's estate, to Stype Investments (Jersey) Ltd., the asset was no longer land in England, but was a chose in action.

Nor is 'chose' the only bit of French in the Clore judgment:

Civil Procedure—costs—jurisdiction to fix scale fees—scale of fees to be fixed by Superior Number of Royal Court under Loi (1939) sur les honoraires des Avocats et des Écrivains—Greffier to make allocation within scale prescribed.

In English law, Latin is the most likely source of foreign or foreign-derived words, and terms such as "ad bona colligenda" frequently tip off the tongue of judges and solicitors.

Choses, chattels, issue and most foreign and legal terms are best left to the professionals, but some words and phrases provide enlightenment for laymen.

For example, the Latin 'per stirpes' designates gifts that travel or reach along a branch on the family tree, in contrast to 'per capita,' which is a gift to an individual and only to that individual. If that individual dies, the gift does not pass to that individuals relatives.

Give a gift to an individual and, if that individual has died, end of story. But if the gift is given per stirpes, it goes to the branch - and the branch consists of the individual plus his or her children (and their children!).

Example: an elderly man leaves an equal amount of cash per stirpes to his daughter and three sons. All of the sons are alive but the daughter has died. However, her children are alive. As they are on her branch, her share passes to them. Her children divide the gift among themselves.

And because the gift passes down the branch, if the daughter AND her children were dead, if any of those children had children, they too are on the branch - her branch - and become the beneficiaries. In this instance, the beneficiaries are the original benefactor's great-grandchildren.

The term 'per stirpes' is alive and well. It appears in the wills of Diana, Princess of Wales, Linda McCartney, Elvis Presley and actor Paul Newman. The gobbledegook case also has an instance of 'per stirpes,' tellingly used not by the solicitor who drafted the will but by the judge who proclaimed against it.