Definition
"For a term which has passed." A Latin phrase identifying the specific writ of entry used at common law by a landlord to recover possession of leased premises from a tenant who remained in occupation after the expiration of the agreed term. The writ was premised on the tenant's original lawful entry — entry by demise — followed by the tenant's wrongful holdover once that term expired. Because the tenant had entered rightfully, the landlord could not use a writ premised on unlawful entry; instead, the writ ad terminum qui preterit acknowledged the lawful origin of possession and targeted the subsequent wrong of holding over.
The phrase operates both as a descriptive name for the writ and as a shorthand identifying the category of tenancy dispute it addressed: the tenancy was real, the term was fixed, the term had expired, and the tenant refused to quit.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term is almost exclusively a historical common law artifact. Researchers encountering it will do so in pre-nineteenth-century English reports, pleading manuals, or texts on real property and landlord-tenant law from the common law period. It does not appear in modern American or English statutory practice; the old real actions, including the various writs of entry, were largely abolished in England by the Real Property Limitation Act 1833 and subsequent reforms, and were never transplanted into American practice in functional form.
The chief research trap is conflation with other writs of entry. The writ of entry was a family of writs, not a single instrument. Ad terminum qui preterit was the specific variant for expired-term holdovers. Related variants addressed entry by disseisin, entry during coverture, or entry by a life tenant whose estate had ended. Precision matters when reading old pleading records or abridgments, because the wrong writ meant the action failed regardless of the merits.
Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium — cited in both Black's editions — is the authoritative primary reference for the mechanics of this writ and remains the correct source for researchers tracing its procedural requirements. Black's cross-citation to Fitzh. Nat. Brev. 201 is reliable and should be followed directly.
Researchers working in American colonial or early republic property law should note that while some colonies adopted forms of the real actions, holdover tenancy disputes in American practice migrated quickly toward ejectment as the preferred remedy, rendering ad terminum qui preterit largely theoretical even in the earliest American legal literature.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Both Black's editions define the phrase identically in substance: "for a term which has passed," describing a writ of entry for landlord recovery against a holdover tenant. The two editions show no meaningful divergence on this term, which reflects its stable, archaic character — by the time either edition was compiled, the writ was already a historical object rather than a living remedy.
Neither edition provides procedural depth beyond the identification of the writ's purpose and the Fitzherbert citation. Researchers seeking the formal requirements of the writ — the count, the degrees of entry, the tenant's available defenses — must look to Fitzherbert directly or to the common law pleading treatises (Glanvill, Bracton, and the later abridgments of Rolle and Viner) for fuller treatment. Black's entries function here as index pointers rather than comprehensive accounts.
One minor note: both editions append the maxim "Ad tristem partem strenua est suspicio" (Suspicion lies heavy on the unfortunate side) immediately after the ad terminum qui preterit entry as a typographical run-on. This is an artifact of alphabetical arrangement in the Latin maxims section, not a substantive connection between the two entries.
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Jurisdictional Note
This writ was a creature of English common law and never achieved independent statutory footing in American jurisdictions. Modern holdover tenancy disputes in all U.S. jurisdictions are governed by landlord-tenant statutes, summary possession or unlawful detainer proceedings, and lease terms — not by writ practice. The term has no operative jurisdictional relevance today.
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