Definition
A Latin term from the civil law meaning "to happen," "to fall," or "to come to pass." The term appears in legal texts primarily in two related senses:
1. To occur or take place — used in maxims and doctrinal statements addressing events, contingencies, or occurrences in the transaction of legal affairs.
2. To befall or come to hand — used specifically in the context of estate administration to describe assets that arrive in the hands of an executor or administrator after a prior accounting or plea. In this sense, accidere is the root of the phrase quando acciderint, meaning "when they shall have come to hand," which arises in pleading practice following a plea of plene administravit.
Common Confusion
Accidere should not be confused with accident in its modern tort law sense. While the English word "accident" derives from the same Latin root, the legal Latin term carries no connotation of negligence, fault, or unforeseeable mishap. In civil law texts, accidere is a neutral term of occurrence. The overlap in etymology can mislead researchers into importing modern tort concepts into classical civil law passages where none are intended.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering accidere in primary sources will find it in two distinct textual environments that require different research strategies.
First, in civil law maxims and Digest citations, accidere functions as a general term of occurrence and is often paired with adverbs of frequency or probability — as in the Digest maxim ea quae raro accidunt, addressing rare contingencies in business transactions. Researchers working in Roman law, civilian jurisdictions, or early American courts applying civil law principles should treat these passages as expressions of interpretive caution rather than as doctrine with procedural effect.
Second, in common law pleading — particularly English and early American practice — the phrase quando acciderint is a term of art with real procedural consequence. When an executor or administrator pleads plene administravit (that the estate has been fully administered), a plaintiff who cannot immediately traverse that plea may pray judgment of assets quando acciderint, preserving the right to proceed against future assets as they come into the executor's hands. Researchers tracing estate litigation in historical American or English records will encounter this phrase as a standard pleading formula. It appears in early American treatises on executors and administrators and in Year Books and common law pleading manuals.
The term is essentially absent from modern American legal writing. Its appearance in a source almost always signals either a civil law context (Roman law, Louisiana, or comparative law scholarship) or a pre-twentieth-century common law pleading record. Researchers should resist updating the language to modern equivalents without verifying whether the original procedural formula has a surviving analog in the jurisdiction under study.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill and Anderson agree on the core meaning — to happen, to fall out, to come to pass — but emphasize different applications. Burrill draws primarily on the civil law dimension, quoting the Digest maxim regarding rare contingencies (Dig. 50.17.64) and noting Calvinus's Lexicon for the euphemistic use of accidere to express death, a usage reflecting the Roman rhetorical preference for softened language around mortality. Anderson focuses on the common law pleading application, specifically the quando acciderint formula in the context of the plene administravit plea.
Neither source treats the term at length, which reflects its function as a foundational Latin verb rather than a technical legal concept in its own right. The interest lies in its compounds and derivatives. Burrill's note on the euphemistic death usage is an isolated observation; researchers should not expect to find it recurring as a term of art in that sense outside classical Latin legal texts.
Jurisdictional Note
The quando acciderint formula developed in English common law and passed into early American practice. It has no direct equivalent in civil law jurisdictions. In Louisiana, accidere may appear in translated or quoted civil law sources without the pleading significance it carries in common law jurisdictions.