Definition
An adjective describing property, succession, or interests that are subject to escheat, forfeiture, or confiscation — that is, property that passes to the state or a superior party by operation of law rather than by voluntary transfer or ordinary inheritance. A caducary succession is one that arises not from a decedent's will or the rules of intestacy but from the failure of any qualified heir, the legal incapacity of a would-be beneficiary, or the forfeiture of a right. The term is closely associated with the Roman law concept of caducum (lapsed or fallen property) and carries forward into common law through Blackstone's usage.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Relating to escheat, forfeiture, or confiscation.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Relating to escheat, forfeiture, or confiscation.
In this instance the common and legal definitions are textually identical, but the word carries no independent life in ordinary modern English — it appears almost exclusively in legal and historical legal writing. A researcher encountering "caducary" outside a legal text is almost certainly reading a source that borrowed the term from legal usage, not from general vocabulary.
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Common Confusion
CADUCARY vs. CADUCIARY: Bouvier flags "caduciary" as the more current form and treats "caducary" as the older spelling preserved in Blackstone. The two words are functionally interchangeable in historical sources; neither is in active modern legal use. Researchers should search both forms when working with historical digests, reporters, or treatises.
CADUCARY vs. CADUCOUS: "Caducous" (from the same Latin root caducus) describes property that is lapsed, fallen, or perishable — particularly in the Roman law sense of a legacy that fails because the legatee cannot or will not take it. "Caducary" describes the character of the succession or title that results. The distinction matters in civilian law sources: a legacy may be caducous (lapsed) without the resulting disposition necessarily being described as caducary succession unless it passes to the state or a superior claimant.
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Why It Matters in Research
The term's practical reach is narrow but precise. When Blackstone uses "caducary" at 2 Bl. Comm. 245, he is drawing an analogy between Roman law's handling of lapsed legacies and the English law of escheat — a connection that illuminates how common law courts theorized the Crown's residual title to ownerless property. Researchers tracing the doctrinal foundations of escheat will find "caducary" serving as a conceptual bridge between civilian and common law traditions.
Because the word is rare and its spelling unstable (caducary / caduciary), full-text corpus searches should be run on both spellings and on the root "caduc-" to capture all variants. The term appears almost exclusively in treatise literature and early reporters; it is not a term of pleading or statutory drafting, so searching case law directly will yield little.
In historical American sources, "caducary succession" occasionally appears in Louisiana materials, where civilian influence was direct. Louisiana's mixed civil-common law heritage makes it the most likely jurisdiction to have used this vocabulary in operative legal documents rather than merely descriptive commentary.
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Historical Dictionary Support
All four source dictionaries converge on the same core definition — relating to escheat, forfeiture, or confiscation — and all anchor it to 2 Bl. Comm. 245. There is no substantive disagreement among them.
Burrill adds the most texture. He traces the term explicitly to the Latin caducus and includes a direct quotation from Lord Mansfield: "A sort of caducary succession" (1 W. Bl. 163). That quotation is significant because it shows the term was not merely Blackstone's academic borrowing but appeared in reported English judicial speech, even if rarely. Burrill's note that the term means "having the character of escheat" is a useful gloss — it signals that "caducary" describes a quality of title or succession, not merely a process.
Bouvier cross-references "caduciary" as the preferred modern form and identifies "caducary" as the old spelling used in Blackstone. This is the one meaningful editorial distinction across the shelf: Bouvier implicitly treats the two spellings as historical variants rather than synonyms of equal standing.
What the historical dictionaries collectively omit is any worked example beyond the Blackstone citation — no discussion of how the concept operated in practice, what triggered a caducary succession, or how courts resolved disputes over whether property had truly escheated versus passed under some residual private title. Researchers needing that operational context must move beyond these dictionary entries to treatises on escheat and to the Roman law sources underlying Blackstone's usage.
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Jurisdictional Note
The term is effectively dormant in modern American and English statutory and case law. Its surviving relevance is concentrated in Louisiana (civilian tradition), historical federal public lands doctrine, and academic writing on the foundations of escheat. Researchers working in any other jurisdiction will encounter it, if at all, only in historical sources.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Escheat
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Forfeiture
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