Definition
A common law writ that lay where two or more tenants in common were jointly obligated to perform some act or bear some burden, and one co-tenant had been compelled to shoulder the entire obligation alone. The writ enabled that co-tenant to compel the others to contribute their proportionate share. It belongs to the class of original writs issued out of Chancery to initiate a common law action, and its purpose was essentially one of equitable apportionment enforced through legal process.
The name derives from the Latin: contributione, meaning contribution or apportionment, and facienda, meaning to be made or to be done — together, a writ for contribution to be made.
Common Confusion
CONTRIBUTIONE FACIENDA should not be confused with the general doctrine of contribution among co-obligors in contract or tort, though the underlying principle is the same. The writ was specifically tied to the relationship of tenants in common and to duties arising from co-ownership of land or jointly held obligations — not to contribution among joint tortfeasors or co-sureties, which were addressed by separate equitable and legal remedies. Modern contribution doctrine has absorbed the substance of this writ, but researchers should not read modern contribution cases backward into historical sources expecting this writ to appear.
Core Elements
The writ required:
1. A tenancy in common, or a relationship of co-owners jointly bound to perform an act or bear a burden.
2. One co-tenant having been compelled to perform the whole of the shared obligation.
3. A failure or refusal by the remaining co-tenants to bear their proportionate share.
4. The burdened co-tenant seeking legal compulsion, rather than mere equitable relief, to enforce contribution.
Why It Matters in Research
This is an archaic original writ with no modern procedural counterpart. Researchers working in English common law records from the medieval and early modern periods — or in American sources predating the merger of law and equity — may encounter references to this writ in pleading records, register books, and form-of-action treatises. Its practical importance had largely faded well before American independence; the substantive right it enforced (contribution among co-owners) migrated into equity and later into statutory and common law contribution doctrines.
Two navigational traps exist. First, the entry in Rapalje & Lawrence runs directly into a note on contributive negligence (of parents, in accidents to children), which is an entirely unrelated doctrine. Researchers scanning historical dictionaries must not conflate these. Second, because this writ appears in the Registrum Originale and Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium — the standard English writ registers — it will surface in those sources under its Latin form, not under any English heading. Researchers using those texts should look for the Latin name directly.
The writ has no meaningful role in modern American practice. Its value today is documentary and historical: understanding the procedural vehicle through which co-tenants once enforced contribution rights illuminates the development of contribution doctrine generally and the shift from writ-based common law pleading to modern civil procedure.
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence provide the essential definition concisely: a writ lying where tenants in common were bound to do some act and one was put to the whole burden, used to compel the rest to make their contribution. They cite the Registrum Originale at folio 175 and Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium at folio 162 — the two foundational English writ authorities. No other shelf sources in the Law Mind corpus address this writ independently.
The brevity of the Rapalje & Lawrence entry is appropriate to the term's status by the late nineteenth century: it was already a historical curiosity, included for completeness in practice dictionaries rather than as a living tool of litigation. Modern legal dictionaries have largely dropped the entry. The historical sources agree on the writ's function but offer little analysis of its procedural details or the circumstances under which it fell into disuse.
Jurisdictional Note
This writ was an English common law form and, as such, formed part of the received common law in American jurisdictions. However, there is no meaningful American practice record for it. Contribution among co-tenants in the United States has been governed by equity and, subsequently, by statute and common law doctrine, with no revival of the writ form.