If a will or estate settlement refers to some individuals as legatees and to others as devisees, there is a difference. Generally speaking legatees take legacies (personal or chattel property) from the estate and devisees take devises (real property) from the estate. The are bequeathed the property in the individual’s will. They are different from heirs. Heirs are individuals who have the right to inherit from an individual based upon their biological relationship to the deceased and contemporary statute. Legatees and devisees can be heirs, but they do not have to be. A testator can bequeath property in their will so that heirs receive nothing.
The holidays can be a time to bore your relatives with family stories. Try and avoid this. Another holiday genealogical activity is to put out unidentified photographs at family gatherings and see if anyone can remember: who is in the picture when it was taken where it was taken what was going on when it was taken etc. It may take a village to identify the photograph. One relative may remember one detail, another may remember something else, discussion may trigger memories, etc. Don’t try and insist that someone remember everything–and even an “irrelevant” clue may end up being significant. And it’s allowable if you can’t identify everything in the picture. I still don’t remember the name of the stuffed animal shown in the illustration to this post.
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