CUSTUS - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

CUSTUSAuthored

The Law Mind • 648 words

Definition

Custus is a Latin term from old English law meaning cost, charge, or expense — particularly costs and charges incurred in legal proceedings. It appears frequently in early legal texts and writs in phrases such as ad custum tuum (at your cost), ad custum ejus (at his cost), and ad custus proprios (at his own costs/charges). The term functioned as the standard Latin rendering of what modern practice calls court costs or litigation expenses.

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Why It Matters in Research

Custus is a term researchers will encounter almost exclusively in pre-modern English legal sources — Year Books, early treatises such as Glanvill and Bracton, and the Registers of Original Writs (Registrum Omnium Brevium). It does not appear in modern statutory or case law in its Latin form; by the time English legal reporting matured, the term had been displaced by the anglicized costs and charges.

The principal research trap is recognizing custus in context without misreading it as a proper name or confusing it with similar-looking Latin terms (see COMMON CONFUSION below). Burrill's entry is brief and its surrounding text appears partially garbled in transcription, incorporating text from an unrelated entry — researchers relying on digitized versions of Burrill should be alert to OCR and transcription errors that can corrupt short Latin entries and blend them with adjacent material.

For corpus researchers working in Law Mind's historical English legal materials, custus most often appears in the ablative or accusative case within prepositional phrases (ad custum, ad custus). Tracking these phrases rather than the nominative form alone will yield more complete results. The Glanvill and Bracton citations in Burrill — Glanvill, lib. 1, c. 32 and Bracton, fol. 234 — are genuine reference points and can be verified against standard editions of those treatises.

Jurisdictional note: Custus is essentially an English legal Latinism. Researchers working in Scots, Irish, or continental sources may encounter cognate terms but should not assume identical usage.

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Historical Dictionary Support

Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the primary historical anchor for custus in Anglo-American legal lexicography. Burrill correctly identifies it as Latin, situates it in old English law, and supplies the core meaning: cost, charge, expense, costs, charges. His entry is compact but reliable in its core content, citing Glanvill and Bracton as foundational sources and the Registrum Originale for the ad custum tuum formula.

The entry as it appears in surviving copies and digitizations shows signs of printing disruption — text from an unrelated entry concerning rules of will construction appears to have been merged into the custus entry. This is a feature of the source, not the term, and reflects the bibliographic hazards common to nineteenth-century legal dictionary typography. Researchers should treat the extraneous text (beginning with "apparent on a will, and the particular intention cannot take effect") as belonging to an adjacent entry, likely relating to the maxim on general and particular intentions in will drafting.

No entry for custus appears in Black's Law Dictionary in its standard modern editions, which is consistent with the term's status as archaic Latin rather than living legal vocabulary. Earlier editions of Black's and Abbott's Law Dictionary may carry brief mentions, but Burrill remains the most complete English-language legal dictionary source for this term.

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CUSTUSmain

Burrill's Law Dictionary • 1867

L. Lat. In old English law. apparent on a will, and the particular inCost; charge; expense; costs; charges. tention cannot take effect, the words shall Glanv. lib. 1, c. 32. Ad custum tuum; be so construed as to give effect to the at your cost. Reg. Orig. 2 b. Ad cusral intention. Broom's Maxims, 244, [434.] tum ejus. Bract. fol. 234. Ad custus Lewis on Perpetuity, 426. 2 Smith's Lead. proprios; at her own charges. Fleta, lib. Cas. 294. Thus, in case of a donation for 1, c. 15, § 3. Primi custus; the first costs. charitable purposes, if it be incapable of Id. lib. 2, c. 73, § 3. being literally acted upon, or if its literal CUTH, Couth. Sax. Known; know-performance would be unreasonable, a deing. Uncuth; unknown. See Couthutlaugh, Uncuth. ČUTPURSE. [L. Lat. bursarum scissor; L. Fr. cynsour de burse, q. v.] In old criminal law. An offender answering to the modern pickpocket. Fleta, lib. 1, c. 36, § 11. cree will be made for its execution cy pres, that is, in some method conformable to the general object, as closely as possible to the specific design of the donor. 3 Steph. Com. 230. 2 Story's Eq. Jur. § 1169, et seq. 2 Kent's Com. 288. So, where limitations are made by way of remainder to the children of unborn persons, which are generally void for remoteness, there are cases in which the courts in England have so moulded, or put such construction upon the limitations, as that the unborn parent CY, Cye, Ci, Si, Sy. L. Fr. So; as. may take an estate tail, and the property Cy languishant ou cy decrepyte que il ne vest in his issue by descent, by which all poit, &c.; so sick or so feeble that he canobjection of remoteness is obviated. Lewis not, &c. Litt. sect. 434. Ne soies cye on Perpetuity, 426. It is this last descripcyeon VOL. I.