Definition
An Anglo-French legal term meaning "determinable" or "respited" — that is, subject to a fixed term or assigned time for performance. Used specifically in the context of debt obligations, *dettes atterminez* referred to debts for which a definite time of payment had been set or allowed by the creditor or a court. The term carries the sense of a debt that has been given a scheduled due date or a period of grace, distinguishing it from a debt immediately due and enforceable.
Common Confusion
The word "determinable" in Burrill's definition should not be read through the lens of modern property law, where a *fee simple determinable* is an estate subject to automatic termination on a specified event. In the context of *atterminez*, "determinable" means simply "having an assigned term" — a scheduled date, not a defeasance condition. Researchers encountering this gloss in older sources should treat it as temporal, not conditional.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in Anglo-French (Law French) legal sources and is essentially obsolete in modern legal writing. Researchers encountering it will do so in medieval and early modern English legal records, plea rolls, or treatises drawing on Law French vocabulary. Its significance is narrow but precise: when a source distinguishes *dettes atterminez* from other categories of debt, it signals a procedural or substantive distinction about enforceability and timing. A debt that is *atterminez* is not yet in default — the creditor's right to sue may be suspended until the assigned time has elapsed. This has implications for how early common law courts assessed the ripeness of a debt claim.
Researchers working in historical debt law, early equity practice, or medieval commercial law should treat this term as a marker of procedural status rather than substantive character. It does not describe the nature of the underlying obligation but the state of its enforcement timeline. Conflating it with terms describing the nature or validity of a debt (such as whether a debt is conditional or absolute) would be an error.
The term is narrow enough that it appears in few secondary sources. Kelham's *Glossary of Norman and Old French Words* is the primary authority cited by Burrill, and researchers tracing this term should go there directly rather than expecting coverage in later legal dictionaries.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the sole historical legal dictionary source for this term in the Law Mind corpus, and its entry is spare: it defines *atterminez* as "determinable; respited" and notes *dettes atterminez* as debts for which certain times were assigned for payment, citing Kelham throughout. Burrill does not elaborate on procedural context or provide illustrative case material.
The attribution to Kelham (*A Dictionary of the Norman or Old French Language*, 1779) is consistent with the term's Law French origins. Researchers should note that Burrill's reliance on Kelham without independent case authority means this entry rests on lexicographic rather than doctrinal foundations. No other major historical legal dictionaries in common use — not Bouvier, not Black's early editions — appear to carry this term, suggesting it was already archaic by the nineteenth century and was preserved only as a philological curiosity rather than a working legal concept.
The gloss "determinable" is potentially misleading to modern readers. In current property law, "determinable" has a specific meaning (an estate that automatically ends upon the occurrence of a condition). That meaning is unrelated to *atterminez*, where "determinable" carries the older sense of "having a fixed term" or "subject to a set limit of time."