Definition
"Concealed with intent to avoid pro[cess]" — the entry as it appears in historical legal dictionaries is a fragment, almost certainly a truncated form of the phrase "concealed with intent to avoid process" or, in some attachment and creditor-remedy contexts, "concealed with intent to avoid prosecution." The full phrase describes a debtor's or defendant's deliberate act of hiding themselves, their property, or both, for the purpose of frustrating the legal process directed against them — whether civil process (writs, attachments, summons) or, less commonly, criminal prosecution.
In its most frequently encountered legal context, the phrase appears in attachment statutes and fraudulent debtor provisions: a creditor may obtain an attachment against a debtor's property when the debtor has concealed themselves or their assets with intent to avoid service of process or to defraud creditors. The concealment element is not mere absence or evasion — it requires a purposive act of hiding combined with the specific intent to defeat the legal mechanism at issue.
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Common Confusion
The phrase is frequently encountered as a fragment in older digests and statutory compilations, where the terminal word "pro" is cut off — most likely standing for "process" in a civil context or "prosecution" in a criminal context. These are meaningfully different legal concepts. Concealment to avoid civil process triggers attachment remedies and creditor rights; concealment to avoid criminal prosecution implicates obstruction and flight doctrines. Researchers encountering the truncated form must consult the surrounding statutory text to determine which meaning applies. Do not assume the two are interchangeable.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term is almost exclusively a creature of nineteenth-century attachment statutes and their accompanying case law. The phrase appears in the Law Mind corpus in truncated form precisely because legal compilers of the period frequently abbreviated standard phrases at page breaks or column limits — a bibliographic hazard that can send researchers in the wrong direction.
Key navigational points:
The Rapalje & Lawrence entry places this phrase in proximity to creditor-remedy and attachment contexts (note the neighboring entry "CESS, in attachment act"), strongly suggesting the operative meaning is concealment to avoid civil process rather than criminal prosecution.
State attachment statutes of the nineteenth century varied considerably in what conduct triggered the attachment remedy. Some required proof of actual concealment of the debtor's person; others required concealment of assets; still others required both. Researchers relying on a single-state case for this phrase should not generalize across jurisdictions without checking the local statute.
The intent element is where most historical litigation centered. Courts split on whether temporary absence, failure to be found at the usual residence, or refusal to answer a door constituted sufficient evidence of concealment with the requisite intent. The mental element distinguished mere evasion (often insufficient) from purposive hiding (sufficient).
When tracing this phrase through the corpus, researchers should also look under related headings: ABSCONDING DEBTOR, FRAUDULENT CONCEALMENT, ATTACHMENT (grounds for), and NON EST INVENTUS (the sheriff's return when a defendant could not be found).
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Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence's treatment is fragmentary — the phrase appears as a heading entry without a developed definition, placed between entries on concealing birth and concealing smuggled goods. The editorial cluster is telling: the compilers treated concealment-based offenses and concealment-based civil triggers as a coherent doctrinal neighborhood, grouping them by the operative act (concealment) rather than by the legal consequences (which differ substantially across criminal, tort, and creditor-remedy law).
The neighboring entry "CESS, in attachment act" (citing 15 Wend. 461) confirms the attachment-statute context. The Wendell reporter was a New York series covering the 1828–1841 period, and New York's attachment practice during this period was among the most developed in the country, giving rise to considerable definitional litigation about what conduct satisfied the concealment-and-intent requirement.
Historical dictionaries generally do not synthesize the criminal and civil meanings of this phrase — a gap that reflects the period's tendency to treat attachment practice as a distinct procedural specialty. Researchers should not expect pre-twentieth-century sources to resolve the ambiguity directly.
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Jurisdictional Note
The phrase is most fully developed in states with robust nineteenth-century attachment statutes — New York, Massachusetts, and the commercial states generally. Western states admitted after 1850 sometimes adopted modified versions of Eastern attachment statutes, altering the concealment standard. Federal practice under diversity jurisdiction looked to state law, making the local statutory definition controlling in most historical cases.
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