Definition
Ad terminum qui (Latin: "for the term which") is an archaic common law writ of entry used to recover possession of land from a tenant who continues to hold the property after the expiration of a lease. The full form most commonly encountered in legal sources is ad terminum qui praeteriit — "for the term which has passed" — which lay against a lessee or their assigns who wrongfully held over beyond the end of their tenancy.
The writ was a real action, not a personal one. It did not seek damages for the wrongful holding but rather restoration of seisin — actual possession — to the rightful landlord or reversioner. Two principal situations gave rise to the writ:
1. A lease for a fixed term of years, after which the tenant refused to yield up possession.
2. A lease for the life of a third party (pur autre vie), where that third party died and the lessee continued in possession beyond the natural end of the estate.
In both cases, the lessor's right to re-enter had ripened, and the writ provided the formal procedural vehicle to enforce it in the royal courts.
Common Confusion
Ad terminum qui praeteriit is sometimes conflated with other writs of entry that sound in similar fact patterns — particularly the writ of entry sur disseisin and the writ of ejectment. The distinction matters for historical research. Ad terminum qui praeteriit addressed a specific wrongfulness: not a forcible ouster or a wrongful original entry, but a lawful entry that had simply outlasted its authorization. The tenant's possession began rightfully; the wrong consisted entirely in overstaying. Ejectment, which eventually superseded most real actions in English practice, operated on a different procedural fiction altogether and should not be read back into earlier sources as a functional equivalent.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in pre-modern English legal sources — primarily in treatises, registers of writs, and Year Book materials predating the dominance of ejectment as the standard possessory remedy. Researchers will encounter it most often when working with:
— Medieval and early modern English land tenure disputes
— Registers of writs (the formulary books that catalogued available royal writs)
— Treatises in the common law tradition, including Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium and later compilations drawing on it
— Glossaries and abridgments such as Termes de la Ley, which Black's cites as authority for this entry
The writ belongs to the larger family of writs of entry, a category of real actions that medieval English law organized by the "degree" of wrong — how many hands removed from the original dispossession the wrongful possession had passed. Ad terminum qui praeteriit occupied a defined slot in this taxonomy: the degree was not counted by transfer of possession but by the simple expiration of a lawful term.
By the seventeenth century, the action of ejectment had become the preferred — and eventually the universal — vehicle for recovering land, rendering most writs of entry including this one obsolete in practice. Researchers reading historical sources must resist importing modern ejectment logic into cases decided under the writ system; the procedural stakes and the pleading forms were materially different.
American colonial and early republic sources occasionally reference this writ in the context of English common law inheritance, but it had no significant independent life in American practice. Its appearance in American legal dictionaries, including Black's, is largely for completeness and historical reference rather than practical guidance.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary relies entirely on Termes de la Ley for its definition, quoting its description of the writ's two triggering scenarios directly. This is characteristic of how Black's handled archaic real actions — sourcing to early glossary literature rather than case authority, because by the time systematic American legal dictionary-making began, these writs had long since passed out of active use.
The entry in Black's is compact and functional: it identifies who may bring the writ (the lessor or reversioner), against whom (the holding-over lessee or their assigns), and the two factual predicates (term of years elapsed; life measuring a pur autre vie estate terminated). What the historical source does not address — and what researchers should supply from other materials — is the procedural mechanics of how the writ was prosecuted, the pleading forms required, and how courts assessed proof of the term's expiration. For that, Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium and the relevant sections of Bracton provide fuller treatment.
Jurisdictional Note
Ad terminum qui praeteriit was a creature of English common law and had no meaningful separate development in American jurisdictions. Modern holdover tenant remedies in all U.S. jurisdictions are governed by statute and common law principles of landlord-tenant law that replaced the writ system entirely. Researchers working in any jurisdiction after the mid-nineteenth century will not encounter this writ in live litigation.