Definition
Assignatus is a Latin and Law Latin term from old English law meaning an assignee or assign — that is, a person to whom rights, interests, or property have been transferred by another. The term appears in medieval legal instruments and pleadings as the formal designation for the party receiving an assignment, often rendered in formulaic phrases such as "eidem B. vel ejus assignato" ("to the said B. or his assign").
The term carries with it a foundational principle of assignment law encapsulated in the maxim: Assignatus utitur jure auctoris — an assignee uses the right of his principal; an assignee stands in the shoes of the assignor and can assert no greater rights than the assignor possessed at the time of transfer.
Common Confusion
Assignatus, assignee, and assign are functionally equivalent in meaning but differ in register and context. Assignatus is the Latin form encountered in medieval pleadings, writs, and early law French instruments. Assignee is the anglicized term in modern usage. Assign (noun) is the older English form preserved in conveyancing language, as in the phrase "heirs and assigns." Researchers encountering assignatus in historical sources should not treat it as a distinct legal category from assignee — it is the same concept in a different linguistic dress.
Why It Matters in Research
The practical importance of assignatus in legal research is almost entirely historical and linguistic. Researchers working with medieval English plea rolls, early writs, or Fleta and similar treatises will encounter this term as the standard Latin designation for what modern law calls the assignee. Misreading or overlooking the term in a source can cause a researcher to miss who held the transferred interest in a disputed chain of title or contractual succession.
The maxim assignatus utitur jure auctoris is the more significant research target. It states the bedrock principle that an assignee takes subject to all defenses and equities that could have been asserted against the assignor. This doctrine has direct descendants in modern law — including the rule that an assignee of a contract takes subject to defenses the obligor had against the assignor, and in negotiable instruments law, the distinction between holders in due course (who can cut off prior defenses) and ordinary assignees (who cannot). Researchers tracing the historical development of either principle should follow assignatus and the utitur jure auctoris maxim into Broom's Legal Maxims and Halkerstoun's Maxims, both cited by Burrill, and then forward into equity jurisprudence on choses in action.
Researchers should also note that Fleta, the late thirteenth-century legal treatise cited by Burrill, uses assignatus in the context of leaseholds and conveyances. Reading Fleta alongside Bracton and early Year Books will give the fullest picture of how assignment operated in medieval English property law before equity courts developed more flexible transfer mechanisms.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the most direct treatment, identifying assignatus as the old English law equivalent of assignee and illustrating the term with two citations to Fleta and one to Townshend's Pleadings. Burrill also records the maxim assignatus utitur jure auctoris, attributing it to Halkerstoun's Maxims and Broom's Legal Maxims.
No substantive divergence exists across historical sources on the core meaning — assignatus was never a contested or ambiguous term. Its content is entirely definitional and its importance lies in the maxim it anchors. Broom's Legal Maxims, in the pages Burrill cites (approximately 350–362 in period editions), develops the practical implications of the utitur jure auctoris principle at length and remains the most useful secondary source for understanding how the maxim was applied in English courts. Historical dictionaries are silent on any meaningful jurisdictional variation because the term belongs to a period of unified common law development before American and English law diverged.
Jurisdictional Note
Assignatus as a term of art is confined to historical English common law sources. Modern American and English law use assignee exclusively. The underlying doctrine — that an assignee takes subject to defenses against the assignor — persists in both jurisdictions but is expressed through modern assignment law, equity doctrine, and, in the United States, Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code for secured transactions and Article 3 for negotiable instruments.