Definition
To allot is to set apart a specific portion of property, a fund, or another divisible interest and assign it to a particular person as that person's designated share. The term carries two closely related senses in legal usage:
1. Partition and distribution. To allot is to divide property previously held in common — by co-owners, joint heirs, or tenants in common — and assign each person a specific portion to be held in severalty (individually, free from the others' claims). The allotment converts an undivided fractional interest into a defined, separately owned parcel or share.
2. Corporate and securities law. To allot shares, debentures, or other securities is for a corporation to appropriate specific securities to applicants who have applied for them — the formal act by which an offer to subscribe becomes a binding allocation of a specific number of shares. This is generally accomplished by resolution of the board of directors.
A person to whom something is allotted is called an allottee. The result of the act is an allotment.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To distribute or apportion by (or as if by) lot; to assign or designate as a task or for a purpose.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To distribute by lot; to parcel out in parts or portions; to assign as a share; to set apart as one's share; to bestow on or grant.
Editorial note: In ordinary English, "allot" carries a casual sense of assigning any resource — time, tasks, seats — and implies no formal legal consequence. In legal usage, allotment is a term of art with specific consequences: it extinguishes an undivided interest and vests a defined separate interest, or, in corporate law, it creates a binding contractual relationship between the company and the allottee. The informality of common usage obscures how consequential the legal act is.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Indian land allotment. A historically significant and technically distinct use of the term. Under the General Allotment Act of 1887 (Dawes Act), tribal lands held communally were divided and individual parcels allotted to tribal members, often held in federal trust. This usage draws on the partition sense but operates within a specialized federal statutory and treaty framework that generates its own body of law. The allottee receives a trust patent, not fee simple title, and the land remains subject to federal restrictions on alienation.
Testamentary and estate allotment. In the administration of decedents' estates, an allotment may refer to the setting apart of a specific asset or share of the estate — including a dower or curtesy right, or a widow's allowance — to the person entitled.
Judicial allotment. Under some federal and state systems, cases or judges are allotted (assigned) to specific circuits or divisions by administrative order. Anderson's Dictionary notes this sense explicitly: "to allot the justices of the Supreme Court to circuits."
Why It Matters in Research
The term "allot" is polysemous across legal contexts, and conflating its meanings across sources will produce research errors. Three traps are worth flagging:
First, the Indian allotment context generates an enormous and specialized body of federal case law, statutory interpretation, and treaty analysis that is entirely distinct from general property partition doctrine. A researcher encountering "allotment" in a source touching federal Indian law should immediately shift to that specialized corpus — the ordinary property law meaning of the term will be insufficient and can actively mislead.
Second, the corporate allotment sense appears primarily in British and Commonwealth legal sources and in older American corporate law materials. In modern U.S. practice, "allotment" in the securities sense has been largely displaced by terms like "allocation" or "issuance," but the underlying doctrine persists, especially in private placement contexts. Researchers working in early 20th-century corporate law sources will encounter allotment of shares as a term of art with specific procedural requirements.
Third, historical sources use "allot" in the partition context in ways that assume the reader understands the severalty consequence — that the allotment terminates the prior form of joint or common ownership. Sources that predate modern partition statutes may describe allotment procedures that no longer exist or have been substantially modified. Rapalje & Lawrence's treatment of English inclosure law under the General Inclosure Act of 1845 is an example: this is English statutory procedure with no direct American parallel, and the terminology carries over into American sources in ways that can confuse.
Finally, researchers should note that Bouvier's Law Dictionary simply cross-references "ALLOW" for this term — an editorial choice that reflects Bouvier's occasional inconsistency in coverage and should not be read as suggesting the terms are synonymous. They are not.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (both editions) gives substantially identical definitions, anchoring the term in the partition-and-severalty sense while separately noting the corporate allotment of shares. The second edition adds case citations (Glenn v. Glenn; Fort v. Allen) that confirm the property partition usage was well-established in American courts by the turn of the 20th century.
Anderson's Dictionary is the most analytically careful of the historical sources, distinguishing the "set apart to a person as a share" sense from the "assign or appoint" sense, and noting the administrative use in judicial assignments. This tripartite breakdown is more precise than Black's.
Rapalje & Lawrence adds the English inclosure-law context, which is useful for researchers working with colonial or early American land law sources that borrowed from English statutory frameworks.
Bouvier's cross-reference to "ALLOW" is unhelpful and should be disregarded; the terms are etymologically related but legally distinct.
None of the historical dictionaries adequately treats the Indian allotment context, which developed primarily after most of these dictionaries were compiled and which requires engagement with the specialized federal Indian law corpus rather than general property law dictionaries.
Jurisdictional Note
Indian allotment law is a matter of federal law and applies unevenly across tribal nations depending on whether a given reservation was subject to the Dawes Act and subsequent modifications, including the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, which halted further allotment. The corporate allotment of shares retains more vitality in jurisdictions following British corporate law traditions than in standard U.S. corporate practice.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Indian Land Law — Tribal Trust Land, Allotment, and the Indian Reorganization Act (The Law Mind Property Law Encyclopedia)