By the way, you may have noticed, contract law there are a lot of terms that describe the parties involved that end with “or” or “ee”. For example, offeror and offeree from this week’s Draw the Law. If you see this in a long legal document you can immediately recognize the relationship of the parties involved.
The ”or” person is the originating person of the action. It starts with them, and then ends with the “ee” person. Like’s take the example of offerror and offeree. The offeror is the one making the offer, whereas the offeree is receiving the offer.
This works for other relationships like in an assignment, where there is the assignor, the one assigning property or interest rights in something, and the assignee, the one receiving the property or interest rights. Some relationships, do not necessarily follow this categorization, as you will see below (i.e. trustor and trustee).
Consider the following pairs:
- Offeror/offeree – offeror makes an offer to the offeree
- Payor/payee – the payor makes payment to the payee (i.e. the payee is the one who endorses a received check)
- Lessor/lessee – the lessor leases property (or the right to use property) to the lessee
- Licensor/licensee – the licensor grants a license of the right to use something (IP) to the licensee
- Assignor/assignee – the assignor transfers rights or property to the assignee (via an assignment)
- Grantor/grantee – the grantor grants title in real property to the grantee
- donor/donee – the donor donates (gifts something) to the donee)
- *Settlor (trustor)/trustee – the settlor creates the trust, which the trustee holds and manages for the benefit of the trust’s beneficiaries