Definition
An obsolete common law writ available to a woman who had conveyed lands to a man in fee-simple on the condition or expectation that he would marry her, and he then refused to do so within a reasonable time after suitable request. The writ allowed her to recover the lands she had transferred. The remedy was premised on the failure of the implied or express marital purpose underlying the conveyance.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): CUTI is an initialism for "complicated urinary tract infection," used in clinical and medical contexts.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): No entry. The term had no recognized common English meaning in the nineteenth century.
The gap is complete. The medical initialism and the historical legal writ share only an accidental collision of letters. A researcher encountering CUTI in a legal source should not expect the term to carry any meaning beyond its narrow writ context, and no interpretive connection between the two usages exists.
Why It Matters in Research
CUTI is a dead-end term in most research paths — it appears almost exclusively in historical surveys of obsolete writs and in annotated editions of Blackstone's Commentaries. Researchers are unlikely to encounter it in primary sources except in pre-nineteenth-century English pleading records or registers of original writs. The writ was abolished by statute in England (3 & 4 Will. IV, c. 27, the Real Property Limitation Act 1833), so it has no post-abolition case law and no American common law development worth tracing.
The writ's interest today is structural rather than practical: it illustrates how medieval and early modern common law attempted to police conditional or purpose-driven land conveyances between private parties in the context of marriage arrangements. Researchers working on the history of dower, maritagium, or conditions attached to fee-simple grants may encounter CUTI as a comparative data point. It also appears in treatments of the register of original writs (Registrum Omnium Brevium), which is an important source for understanding the procedural universe of early English common law.
Do not expect CUTI to appear in American legal sources. English equity absorbed similar disputes long before American courts were established, and no American jurisdiction adopted the writ.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary and Rapalje & Lawrence are in close agreement on substance. Both trace the writ to the scenario of a woman conveying land in fee-simple with the intent that the recipient marry her, followed by his refusal after reasonable time and request. Rapalje & Lawrence cite the Registrum Originale (Reg. Orig. 66) as authority, grounding the writ in the formal pleading apparatus of medieval English law. Black's cites Blackstone's Commentaries (3 Bl. Comm. 183, note) and attributes the definition to Cowell, a seventeenth-century legal lexicographer.
Both sources note the writ's abolition, though Rapalje & Lawrence are more precise, citing the specific statute. Neither source attempts to analyze the writ's theoretical basis in any depth — their treatment is cataloguing rather than explanatory, consistent with the writ's status as a historical curiosity by the time both dictionaries were compiled. Neither source addresses whether equity offered parallel relief before or after the writ's abolition, a gap worth noting for researchers interested in the complete picture of remedies available in such situations.
Jurisdictional Note
CUTI was an English common law writ with no documented reception in American jurisdictions. Its abolition predates American legal development in most substantive respects. Research beyond English sources is unlikely to be productive.