Definition
De biens le mort is a Law French phrase meaning "of the goods of the deceased." It describes the source from which a debt, judgment, or administration is satisfied — specifically, the assets belonging to a decedent's estate. The phrase appears most commonly as a qualifier in pleading and procedural contexts, identifying that an executor or administrator is liable or accountable only to the extent of the deceased's goods in their hands, not from their own personal assets.
Common Confusion
De biens le mort should not be confused with de son tort (of his own wrong), which describes an executor de son tort — a person who intermeddled with a decedent's estate without authority. Both phrases appear in similar procedural contexts involving estate assets, but they address opposite situations: de biens le mort identifies the proper source of satisfaction from a legitimate estate, while de son tort identifies unauthorized conduct exposing an intermeddler to personal liability.
Why It Matters in Research
This term functions almost exclusively as a technical phrase embedded within longer procedural formulas rather than as a freestanding legal concept. Researchers encountering it in historical pleading records, writ returns, or early equity proceedings should treat it as a signal about the scope of an executor's or administrator's liability — a critical limitation in estate administration law.
The phrase is closely tied to the older doctrine governing how creditors could reach a decedent's estate. In historical sources, it appears alongside related pleading terms such as plene administravit (the executor has fully administered) and devastavit (waste of the estate). Understanding de biens le mort as part of this cluster is essential; read in isolation, it communicates little about the procedural posture of the case.
Researchers working in early English equity or common law records should note that the phrase reflects a period when Law French remained the operative language of pleading and court record. Its appearance in a document is a reliable dating indicator — primarily pre-18th century English practice, though American colonial records may carry it somewhat later.
The single source citation across all three historical dictionaries — Dyer, 32 — refers to Sir James Dyer's Reports, a 16th-century collection of English common law cases. Researchers should be aware that this citation alone anchors the term to a very specific historical moment in English procedural law. No American statutory or constitutional development attaches to this phrase.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (both editions) and Burrill's Law Dictionary offer identical entries: a bare translation and a single citation to Dyer's Reports. There is no divergence among the sources and no substantive analysis — each treats the term as self-explanatory once translated. This consensus reflects the phrase's character as a technical Law French formula rather than a contested legal concept.
The uniform brevity of treatment across all three dictionaries is itself informative. It suggests the term was considered definitionally settled by the time these dictionaries were compiled, its meaning entirely dependent on its procedural context rather than any independent doctrinal content. None of the historical sources explain the broader pleading system in which the term operates, which is the principal gap a modern researcher must fill by consulting treatises on common law pleading or early equity procedure.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Executors and Administrators; Pleading (Historical Common Law Forms)