Definition
A Latin phrase meaning "concerning persons jointly enfeoffed, or seised." The term is most significant as the title of the statute 34 Edward I, an English enactment passed to close a procedural loophole that allowed tenants to delay proceedings in novel disseisin and related real actions. The delay tactic worked as follows: when a tenant was sued in a possessory action, they could plead that another person held the land jointly with them, forcing the plaintiff to begin again and add that party. The statute of De Conjunctim Feoffatis curtailed this maneuver by preventing such dilatory pleas from stalling the action.
The phrase itself is a Law Latin title of convenience, functioning as a short citation to the statute rather than as an operative legal term applied to individual cases.
Common Confusion
The statute is occasionally misidentified in secondary sources. Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) cites it as statute "84 Edw. I," which appears to be a typographical error for 34 Edw. I — the correct regnal year consistent with all other historical sources. Researchers encountering the "84 Edw. I" reference should treat it as a transcription error and understand it to refer to the same enactment.
Why It Matters in Research
This term functions almost exclusively as a historical marker. Researchers are unlikely to encounter it in any modern legal context. Its value in the Law Mind corpus lies in three areas:
First, it illuminates the mechanics of medieval real property litigation, particularly the role of novel disseisin as the dominant possessory remedy and the chronic problem of dilatory pleas. Understanding why Parliament needed to pass a statute addressing joint feoffees reveals how possessory actions actually operated in practice — not as swift remedies, but as proceedings vulnerable to procedural delay at nearly every stage.
Second, the statute sits within a cluster of late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century parliamentary enactments that systematically refined and patched the real actions. Researchers tracing the development of English land law from the Statute of Quia Emptores (1290) forward will encounter De Conjunctim Feoffatis as part of that legislative sequence. Reeves' History of English Law is the primary secondary source cited by all three dictionary entries and remains the natural starting point for substantive research on this statute's operation and context.
Third, because the term appears only as a statute title and not as a common law doctrine, searches through case reporters will yield little. The productive research path runs through English statutory history, legal history treatises, and commentary on the real actions — not through case law.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's (1st and 2nd eds.) and Burrill are in full agreement on the definition, the statute's purpose, and the citation to Reeves. The entries are nearly identical, with Black's 2nd edition containing the apparent typographical error noted above. None of the three sources ventures beyond the bare description of the statute's purpose, and none discusses the statute's subsequent fate — whether it remained operative, was superseded, or became obsolete as the real actions themselves declined. Researchers should not mistake the brevity of these entries for the full extent of available historical scholarship; Reeves' History of English Law provides the fuller treatment that the dictionary entries merely summarize.
Jurisdictional Note
This statute belongs exclusively to English legal history and has no direct counterpart or reception in American law. The real actions it addressed were largely abolished in England by the Real Property Limitation Act 1833 and subsequent legislation. No American jurisdiction adopted the statute or the procedural framework it addressed.