GLOSSARY C - D

Capital Gains Tax
or CGT, a tax on the profit made when selling an asset. Each person has an annual CGT allowance for tax free profits.

Chargeable gift
An item given in a Will on which tax may have to be paid.

Chattels
Any movable personal property not used for business. For example, TV, sofa, cooker, jewellery, wine, pictures, even cars and horses.

Children
Children, this covers all legitimate and illegitimate children and legally adopted children. It does not include stepchildren.

Co-habitee
A partner of the Deceased who may be able to claim a share of the estate.  The term ‘common law wife’ has no legal force.

Codicil
An addition or change made to your Will.  It has to be signed and witnessed in the same way as your Will.

Coroner
A doctor or lawyer responsible for investigating deaths in the following situations:

• The Deceased was not attended by a doctor during the last illness or the doctor treating the Deceased had not seen him or her either after death or within the 14 days before death.
• The death was violent or unnatural or occurred under suspicious circumstances. The cause of death is not known or is uncertain.
• The death occurred while the patient was undergoing an operation or did not recover from the anaesthetic.
• The death was caused by an industrial disease.
• The death occurred in a prison or in police custody.

De facto
Usually used when referring to the common law spouse as a de facto wife or the de facto husband.  Not legally married, but living together as if married, the common law couple do not share the same rights as a married couple.

Deposition
The official statement by a witness taken in writing as opposed to taken verbally.

Devise
Land or buildings

Discretionary trust
A trust where the Trustee has full power to decide when and which members of a group of Beneficiaries are to receive their capital.