Definition
To turn over money or goods — that is, to assign or appropriate them to a particular use or service. The phrase is Latin, drawn from the medieval law of tenancy and feudal obligation, and appears in historical pleading and conveyancing contexts where property or funds were formally directed toward a designated purpose or person. It is the verbal root underlying the broader concept of attornment.
Why It Matters in Research
This term functions almost exclusively as a historical artifact. Researchers will encounter it in pre-modern English legal records, law Latin pleadings, and early treatises rather than in modern case law or statutory text. Its primary research value is as a key to understanding related concepts: when a historical source uses attornare rem, it signals a formal act of assignment or redirection of property — not mere delivery, but a legally consequential transfer of application. Researchers working in medieval land law, feudal tenure records, or early chancery materials should recognize it as the operative phrase for what later becomes the doctrine of attornment. Confusion can arise when the term appears in fragmentary Latin pleadings where its object (rem — the thing) is ambiguous; context will determine whether money, goods, or an obligation is being redirected. The term does not appear with any consistency in American legal sources and is essentially absent from post-colonial common law practice.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary preserves the core meaning without elaboration: "to turn over money or goods, i.e., to assign or appropriate them to some particular use or service." This is the only entry of note in the Law Mind historical shelf for this term, reflecting how narrow its recorded usage is. Black's treats it as a gloss on the Latin rather than a term with independent doctrinal development, which is accurate. Historical dictionaries generally subsume this phrase under the entry for ATTORN or ATTORNMENT, suggesting that attornare rem was understood primarily as a functional description rather than a technical term of art with its own body of doctrine. The gap in historical sources is notable: no historical dictionary in the standard shelf provides a worked example from pleading or a case reference, leaving the term somewhat decontextualized for researchers who need to place it in practice.