General (not jurisdiction-specific)

A person’s legal position or condition, which carries certain rights and duties. Examples include citizenship, immigration status, marital status, and a lawyer’s license status with the state bar.

A trust that the settlor can change or cancel during their lifetime. It is often called a living trust and is commonly used to avoid probate. Under Uniform Trust Code § 602, a trust is revocable unless its terms expressly say it is irrevocable, in states that adopted that rule. A revocable trust usually becomes irrevocable when the settlor dies.

Able to be canceled or withdrawn. For example, a revocable trust or a revocable offer can be taken back by the person who made it, within the limits the law allows.

A trust that the settlor cannot cancel or change on their own after it is created. However, it can sometimes be changed or ended with the consent of the settlor and all beneficiaries, or by a court (Uniform Trust Code § 411). People use irrevocable trusts for estate tax planning, asset protection and benefits planning.

For U.S. tax purposes, a trust that does not meet two tests: a U.S. court can exercise primary supervision over it, and one or more U.S. persons control all of its substantial decisions (26 U.S.C. § 7701(a)(30)(E) and (a)(31)(B)). U.S. owners and beneficiaries of foreign trusts have extra reporting duties under 26 U.S.C. § 6048. In state trust law, the phrase can also mean a trust governed by another state’s law.

The study and theory of law, including what law is and how it should work. The word also means the body of court decisions on a subject, as in “Fourth Amendment jurisprudence.”

A trust that is not set up as a corporation. Most private trusts are unincorporated: a trustee holds property for beneficiaries under the trust document, and the trust itself is not a separate legal entity in most states. Some states also allow business or statutory trusts, such as a Delaware statutory trust (12 Del. C. § 3801 and following). In IRS Notice 97-24, the IRS warned that abusive trust arrangements, including some business trusts, do not reduce taxes when the owner keeps control of the property.

A member of the clergy, or a high government official, such as a cabinet minister in a parliamentary system. For clergy, the “ministerial exception” bars many employment discrimination claims by ministers against their religious organizations (Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC, 565 U.S. 171 (2012)), and 26 U.S.C. § 107 excludes a qualifying parsonage allowance from a minister’s gross income. A “ministerial act,” by contrast, is an official duty performed without discretion.

A religious body or congregation and, in law, the organization through which it holds property and runs its affairs. Churches can qualify for federal tax exemption under 26 U.S.C. § 501(c)(3), and under 26 U.S.C. § 508(c)(1)(A) they do not have to apply to the IRS to be recognized as exempt. The First Amendment limits how far courts and governments may decide internal church matters.

Property received from a person who has died, whether by will, by trust or under intestacy law. Federal law does not tax an heir’s receipt of an inheritance as income (26 U.S.C. § 102(a)), although a large estate may owe federal estate tax and a few states impose an inheritance tax on recipients.