Definition
BONORUM (Latin: "of goods") is the name of an obsolete common law writ available to a widow against the executor of her deceased husband's estate. The writ compelled the executor to assign to the widow her rightful one-third share of the decedent's personal property after the payment of his debts. It functioned as an enforcement mechanism for the widow's dower-adjacent right in personalty — distinct from dower proper, which concerned real property.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in historical sources and has no operational significance in modern law. Researchers encountering it in primary sources or early treatises should understand it as a procedural remedy within the common law system of widows' rights in personal estate — a system substantially replaced by statutory spousal elective share regimes. The writ is a marker of the period when widows had a recognized but often practically frustrated claim to a portion of personalty, requiring court process to vindicate.
The key navigational trap: the source dictionaries are not entirely consistent. The first edition of Black's characterizes the executor's conduct as having "damnified and deceived" the widow — language suggesting fraud or wrongful conduct as a trigger. The second edition and Bouvier both omit this language, framing the writ more neutrally as a remedy available upon refusal to distribute. Researchers using the first edition entry should treat the "damnified and deceived" formulation with caution; it may reflect either a distinct technical requirement of the pleading or an editorial overstatement not borne out by the underlying authority. Both editions cite Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium, though to different page references, suggesting reliance on different editions of that work. Bouvier cites a substantially different page number still. Cross-check against Fitzherbert directly if the precise procedural elements matter to your research.
The writ belongs to a cluster of historical remedies addressing the administration of decedents' estates and the protection of widows' rights — a corpus well represented in early English legal literature but increasingly inaccessible without Latin fluency. BONORUM should be read alongside entries for DOWER, THIRDS, and ADMINISTRATION to reconstruct the full framework of spousal entitlement at common law.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries agree on the core substance: the writ ran against an executor, its purpose was to secure a widow's one-third share of personal estate, and the share was calculated after payment of debts. This consensus reflects a stable historical understanding of the writ's function.
The divergence lies in characterizing the basis for the writ. Black's first edition introduces the phrase "damnified and deceived," which carries overtones of tortious or deceptive conduct. This language does not appear in Black's second edition or Bouvier, both of which treat simple refusal by the executor as sufficient. Whether the first edition's language tracks a pleading formula from Fitzherbert or represents an interpretive gloss is unclear without consulting the primary source. Bouvier's entry is the most compressed of the three, adding the useful specification that the widow "sued out" the writ — confirming it was an original writ initiated by the widow, not a court-issued process on its own motion.
None of the three source entries situate BONORUM within the broader taxonomy of writs or explain its relationship to ecclesiastical jurisdiction over probate matters, which was the concurrent forum for many disputes over decedents' estates in the relevant period. Historical sources are largely silent on how BONORUM interacted with probate court proceedings — a gap researchers should be aware of.
Jurisdictional Note
BONORUM was an English common law writ with no surviving modern counterpart in any U.S. or Commonwealth jurisdiction. American states replaced common law writ practice in this area with statutory probate and elective share regimes. Researchers in early American colonial records may encounter the writ by name in jurisdictions that inherited English common law directly, but it would have been obsolete well before the founding period.