Appointment. In a deed or will, power is often given or reserved to a certain person to appoint the uses to which property may be applied. Thus, a marriage settlement may contain a power of appointment, enabling the wife to distribute her property among the children of the marriage at her own discretion. The appointment when it is made derives its force, and the party in whose favour it is made derives his title, from the instrument in which the power of appointment is contained. The Courts of Equity give relief against a defective appointment, or defective execution of a power, where there is what is called a 'meritorious consideration' in the person applying for such relief. As to what amounts to such meritorious consideration, Lord St Leonards, in his work on Powers, lays down that equity will relieve the following parties: (1) A purchaser, including in such term a mortgagee and lessee; (2) A creditor; (3) A wife; (4) A legitimate child; and (5) A charity. But in the case of a defective appointment by a wife in favour of her husband, there is no relief in equity; nor is the equity extended to a natural child; nor to a grandchild; nor to a father or mother, or brother or sister, even of the whole blood, much less of the half-blood; nor to a nephew or cousin. Against the legal consequences of an appointment, the Courts of Equity give no aid. See POWER.
In the Scotch law, the expressions reserved power, faculty to burden, and faculty of distribution, correspond to the English phrase 'power of appointment;' and the deed or instrument subsequently executed in virtue of the reserved power, is simply described according to the nature and quality of the conveyance so made; but the term appointment is not a technical word in Scotland.