n. A warden; one who guards, preserves, or secures; one to whom some person or thing is committed for preservation from injury; one who has the charge or custody of a person or thing.n. Specifically In law, one to whom the law intrusts the care of the person or property, or both, of another. The word is used chiefly in reference to the control of infants; one charged with similar care of an adult idiot or lunatic is now specifically called a committee, though by the civil law termed guardian. A guardian of the property is a trustee, his trust extending to all the property the infant has or may acquire, or all that he or she has or may acquire within the jurisdiction.n. Guardians at common law were: Guardian in chivalry, a lord who, when a tenant by knight-service died and left an infant heir to inherit the tenure, was entitled by the feudal law to take the profits of the estate, and make what he could by negotiating a marriage for the heir, under certain restrictions, being bound to maintain the ward meanwhile.n. Guardian in socage. See socage.n. Guardian by nature, the father, with respect to his guardianship of the person of his heir apparent or heiress presumptive. This guardianship of the person was allowed as an exception to or reservation out of the powers of a guardian in chivalry, so long as the father of the ward lived. (See below.)n. Guardian for nurture, in English law, the father, and after his death the mother, as having guardianship of the persons of all their children up to the age of fourteen years.n. Guardian by election, a guardian chosen by an infant who would otherwise have none. The choice is not effectual except as it procures appointment by a competent court.n. Guardian by custom, an officer or municipality, or the appointee of a lord of the manor, having by local custom, as in London and Kent, England, a legal right to exercise a guardianship. The practical distinctions now are: Judicially appointed guardian, a guardian designated by a court, the judicial power in this respect being now generally regulated by statute; statutory guardian, a guardian appointed by a parent by deed or will, under authority of a statute; testamentary guardian, a guardian appointed by a parent by will, pursuant to the statute; guardian by nature, the father, or, if he be dead, the mother, exercising the common-law custody of the person, and, by statute, in some jurisdictions, the commonlaw power of a guardian in socage in respect to land, if no guardian is expressly appointed.n. The superior of a Franciscan convent.
