Definition
A term of Scots law referring to a security interest constituted by a combination of a personal bond (the debtor's written obligation to pay) and a mortgage over land. The bond creates the personal obligation; the mortgage over the land provides the real security backing that obligation. Together, the two instruments form the curity — a creditor's composite remedy against both the debtor personally and the encumbered land.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering this term will find it almost exclusively in historical Scottish legal materials — deeds, conveyancing records, and older treatises on Scots property and debt law. It does not appear as a recognized term in English common law or modern Scottish law, where the vocabulary of heritable securities has been substantially reformed (notably by the Conveyancing and Feudal Reform (Scotland) Act 1970, which introduced the standard security as the primary form of land security). A researcher working with pre-reform Scottish documents should treat curity as a descriptive composite term rather than a formal term of art in the modern sense — the bond and the mortgage retain their individual legal identities; "curity" names their functional combination. Do not expect the term in English equity sources or in American legal materials; it will not translate across those corpora.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary provides the only dictionary support in the Law Mind corpus: "In Scotch law. A bond and mortgage on land." The entry is terse to the point of requiring inference. Black's does not distinguish the curity from the individual instruments that compose it, nor does it address the procedural or remedial significance of combining personal and real security in Scottish practice. No other major historical dictionary in the corpus — neither Bouvier nor Burrill — appears to carry the term, which confirms its narrow jurisdictional footprint. The absence of fuller treatment in secondary sources means the researcher must look to primary Scots law materials and Scottish institutional writers (such as Stair, Erskine, or Bell) for substantive doctrine.
Jurisdictional Note
Curity is specific to historic Scots law. It has no recognized equivalent in English common law, and the term does not appear in American legal usage. Modern Scottish land security law has been codified and reformed, rendering the term archaic in contemporary practice.