Definition
To attorn is to formally acknowledge a new lord, landlord, or obligee and agree to continue performing obligations — rent, service, or homage — owed to the transferor, now owed instead to the transferee. The act constitutes the tenant's or vassal's consent to, and recognition of, the substitution of one party for another in an existing legal relationship.
Three related senses appear across historical and modern usage:
1. Feudal sense. Where a lord alienated his seigniory, the tenant's homage and services were transferred with it. The tenant was said to attorn when he acknowledged the new lord and agreed to hold of him. This consent was historically required to perfect the transfer of feudal obligations; without it, the alienation was incomplete as against the tenant.
2. Landlord-tenant sense (modern operative meaning). A tenant attorns when, upon the sale or transfer of the landlord's interest in leased property, the tenant acknowledges the purchaser or new holder as the landlord and agrees to pay rent to that party. Attornment converts what would otherwise be a stranger to the lease into the tenant's landlord, and the tenant's continued obligations run to the new landlord accordingly.
3. Jurisdictional sense. Less commonly, a party is said to attorn to a court when that party submits to, or acknowledges, the court's jurisdiction over a dispute — particularly in contexts where jurisdiction would not otherwise attach. This usage survives in international commercial arbitration and some civil procedure contexts.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To transfer one's obligations from one person to another; to consent to the transfer of tenancy obligations to a new landlord; to acknowledge a court's jurisdiction.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To turn or transfer homage and service from one lord to another upon alienation of an estate; to agree to become tenant to one to whom a reversion has been granted.
The common and legal meanings are unusually aligned here, because the term never migrated far from its technical legal origin into everyday speech. The gap worth noting is directional: common usage frames attornment as something the tenant does actively ("transfers obligations"), while legal usage emphasizes it as an acknowledgment or consent — the tenant is not transferring anything of their own but rather recognizing a change that has occurred above them in the tenure structure.
Common Confusion
Attorn is frequently encountered alongside assign and transfer without clear differentiation. The critical distinction: when a tenant assigns, the tenant is the moving party, conveying their own leasehold interest to a third party. When a tenant attorns, the landlord's interest has moved — the tenant is simply acknowledging the new holder of that interest. The tenant does not initiate and does not convey; the act is responsive and confirmatory. Researchers who conflate the two concepts in historical property records will misread which party acted and why.
Core Elements
The act of attornment in its landlord-tenant form has three operative components:
1. Prior relationship. An existing tenancy between the original landlord (grantor) and the tenant must be in place.
2. Transfer of the landlord's interest. The landlord has alienated — by sale, assignment, mortgage, or other conveyance — the reversion or leasehold superior interest to a new party.
3. Tenant's acknowledgment. The tenant expressly or (in modern law, often) constructively acknowledges the new party as landlord, typically by paying rent to or entering a written agreement with the transferee.
In feudal law, a fourth element — the new lord's acceptance — completed the circle. The modern form has shed most of the ceremonial requirements; many jurisdictions now imply attornment from conduct such as paying rent to the new landlord.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in property law, landlord-tenant law, or feudal legal history will encounter attorn and attornment across centuries of materials, but the term's legal weight shifts substantially depending on era and jurisdiction.
In feudal sources (Bracton, Littleton, early Blackstone), attornment is a substantive requirement for the validity of a transfer of seigniory. Its absence could defeat the alienation entirely as against the tenant. Researchers reading these sources must understand that the word describes a legally necessary act, not a courtesy.
By the modern period, the feudal necessity has collapsed. Statutes in England (beginning with the Statute of Frauds era reforms) and most American jurisdictions eliminated the requirement that tenants formally attorn for a conveyance to bind them. Modern commercially drafted leases typically include an express non-disturbance and attornment agreement (SNDA — Subordination, Non-Disturbance, and Attornment), which reintroduces the concept contractually even where it is no longer a common-law necessity.
The jurisdictional sense — attorning to a court — is a live research trap. In international arbitration and cross-border litigation materials, a party that "attorns to the jurisdiction" has submitted to that forum. Researchers unfamiliar with this usage may misread procedural history.
Because the term's operational necessity varies so sharply between historical and modern sources, researchers should not assume that a passage describing attornment as "required" reflects current law, or vice versa.
Historical Dictionary Support
All four source dictionaries converge on the feudal core: attorn means to turn over or transfer homage and service to a new lord upon alienation of an estate. Black's (both editions) and Bouvier's anchor the definition in Bracton's treatment (fols. 81b-82), one of the few points where all sources cite the same primary authority.
Bouvier goes further than the others in capturing the reciprocal nature of the feudal relationship — the lord could not alien without the tenant's consent, nor could the tenant assign without the lord's consent — which is instructive context that Black's (1st ed.) omits. Anderson is the most concise, and notably is the only source to provide a clean two-part definition of the related noun (attornment), distinguishing "consent of a tenant to the grant" from "acknowledgment of a new landlord."
The historical dictionaries are weakest on the modern landlord-tenant application. Black's 2nd ed. gestures toward it ("to consent to the transfer of a rent or reversion") but does not develop the modern SNDA context, which is understandable given the era of publication. The jurisdictional sense (attorning to a court) is absent from all four, though it appears in Wiktionary and reflects genuine modern usage. Researchers relying solely on these dictionaries for the procedural meaning of the term will find no guidance.
Jurisdictional Note
Most American states have abolished or substantially modified the common-law requirement of formal attornment by statute, so that a conveyance of the landlord's interest binds the tenant without any affirmative act on the tenant's part. The concept survives most actively in commercial real estate practice through SNDA agreements. In common-law jurisdictions outside the United States, particularly those retaining closer ties to English real property tradition, historical attornment requirements may retain somewhat greater significance in interpreting older documents.