Definition
"Charges" carries distinct meanings depending on legal context. Researchers should identify which sense applies before treating any source as controlling.
1. Financial charges. Expenses incurred or disbursements made in connection with a contract, suit, or business transaction. In this sense, charges is broader than costs: it captures expenditures that fall outside the technical definition of recoverable "costs" but that one party nevertheless owes another as a result of the transaction or proceeding. A hirer, for example, must pay charges incurred for the hirer's benefit; a losing party in litigation may owe not only taxable costs but also additional charges that do not qualify as costs in the strict procedural sense.
2. Criminal or quasi-criminal charges. An accusation of criminal conduct formally made by a governmental authority — typically by indictment, information, or complaint — that initiates or defines the scope of a criminal prosecution. In this sense, a "charge" identifies the specific offense alleged against the defendant.
3. Encumbrances or liens on property. In property and equity practice, a charge is a burden placed on land or another asset as security for the payment of a debt or performance of an obligation. A charging order, for instance, subjects a debtor's interest in property to satisfy a judgment. This sense is closely related to the concept of a lien and appears frequently in trust, probate, and real property contexts.
4. Instructions to a jury (the judge's charge). A trial judge's formal instructions to the jury on the applicable law, delivered before deliberations. In this usage the singular — "the court's charge" — is more common, but practitioners and older authorities use "charges" for the instructions collectively.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Plural of "charge" — embracing ordinary meanings such as a price asked for goods or services, a formal accusation, or the act of rushing at something.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Charge" encompassed an obligation, expense, accusation, and the care or custody of something or someone. The plural "charges" most naturally meant costs or expenses in commercial speech.
The gap matters here because "charges" in ordinary English can mean simply a bill or fee, while the legal term carries technical weight in at least four distinct frameworks — procedural, criminal, property, and jury instruction — each governed by its own body of doctrine. Context within the source document controls which meaning applies, and the wrong assumption produces a badly misread authority.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Charges against an estate: In probate and succession law, obligations that burden the estate as a whole before distribution to beneficiaries — distinct from personal debts of individual heirs.
Parliamentary charges (or charges parliamentary or otherwise): A subcategory flagged in Rapalje & Lawrence referring to costs and expenses arising in parliamentary or administrative proceedings, a broader category than ordinary litigation costs.
Charging order: A remedy by which a judgment creditor obtains a charge against a debtor's interest in a partnership or LLC membership, without reaching the entity's assets directly.
Why It Matters in Research
The term's multi-valence is its chief research hazard. Historical sources — particularly Bouvier and Burrill — use "charges" almost exclusively in the financial/procedural sense and say little about criminal charges as a formal concept. A researcher consulting those dictionaries for guidance on the Sixth Amendment right to be informed of charges will find the wrong definition staring back. The criminal-accusation sense of the term developed through constitutional practice and procedure, not through the commercial and equity traditions that dominate the historical dictionaries.
In real estate transactions, "charges" appears in closing documents and proration clauses to cover items such as HOA assessments, utility arrearages, and special assessments — a usage that blends the financial sense with property-encumbrance doctrine and may not be flagged as legally significant in a commercial contract checklist.
The distinction between "charges" and "costs" is a persistent trap in historical sources. Rapalje & Lawrence put it plainly: charges is the wider term, encompassing what costs does not. Modern practitioners and statutes sometimes use the terms interchangeably, but historical pleadings and judgments that award "costs and charges" are deliberately capturing both the taxable and the non-taxable expenditures. Collapsing them loses real money.
In LLC and partnership research, "charges" in the form of a charging order is the exclusive remedy in many jurisdictions for a judgment creditor seeking to reach a member's economic interest. Treating a charging order as equivalent to a lien or a levy can misstate both the creditor's rights and the entity's exposure.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries speak with one voice on the financial-procedural sense: charges are expenses incurred in a transaction or suit, and the term is broader than costs. Black's (both editions), Bouvier, Rapalje & Lawrence, and Burrill all offer substantively identical definitions on this point, which confirms the usage was well-settled in Anglo-American practice across the nineteenth century.
Bouvier adds a useful subdivision — charges against the estate — signaling that even within the financial sense, the term had a recognized term-of-art application in succession law. Rapalje & Lawrence is the most practically detailed, noting the distinction between charges and costs explicitly and appending case references for specific sub-applications (charges in a receipt, charges in a statute, charges for commissions), which helps locate the term in period primary sources.
What the historical dictionaries do not cover: the criminal-accusation sense, the constitutional dimension (Sixth Amendment), the jury-instruction sense, and the charging order as a creditor's remedy. These are twentieth- and twenty-first-century doctrinal developments for which the historical shelf offers no guidance. Researchers working in those areas should treat the historical dictionaries as negative space — useful for confirming what "charges" did not mean in classical usage — and consult procedural and constitutional sources directly.
Jurisdictional Note
The charging order remedy varies significantly by jurisdiction: some states (including Delaware and Florida) treat it as the exclusive remedy against an LLC member's interest; others permit foreclosure of the membership interest itself. The financial sense of "charges" in real estate prorations tracks local custom and contract drafting norms. The criminal charges framework is governed federally by the Fifth and Sixth Amendments and at the state level by parallel constitutional provisions and procedural rules that differ in specifics.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Sixth Amendment — Right to Be Informed of Charges (Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia)
Prorations — Taxes, Insurance, Rents, HOA Assessments, and Utility Charges (Law Mind Real Estate Transactions & Construction Encyclopedia)
LLCs — Transferability of LLC Membership Interests and Charging Orders (Law Mind Business Organizations & Corporate Law Encyclopedia)