Art. 3396.Definitions

Chapter 13 introduces a different way to administer a Louisiana succession. Independent administration lets a succession representative act largely without the individual court orders, notices, and publications that the rest of this Title requires for many routine steps, such as sales or cash disbursements, under the default, court-supervised model. Article 3396 opens the Chapter by settling its vocabulary before the later articles build out the mechanics.

Independent administration means administration carried out under this Chapter's rules. An independent administrator is the succession representative the court authorizes to administer that way, and the definition folds in independent executor as a synonym, since a testate succession's representative is normally called an executor and an intestate succession's representative an administrator. Letters of independent administration are the formal document certifying that authority, equivalent to letters of independent executorship and carrying the same legal force as ordinary letters testamentary or letters of administration issued under Article 3159.

Defining these terms together at the outset avoids repeating parallel testate and intestate labels throughout the rest of the Chapter, since a single set of terms now covers a succession representative regardless of whether the underlying succession is testate or intestate.