Definition
A Latin writ of historical English law commanding that a co-tenant — either a joint tenant or a tenant in common — be charged for rent only in proportion to his share of the jointly held land. The writ issued where such a tenant had been distrained (that is, had property seized) for a greater amount of rent than his proportionate interest in the property obligated him to pay. By obtaining this writ, the aggrieved co-tenant could compel that the burden of rent be allocated ratably among all those holding the land, rather than falling disproportionately on one.
The writ is procedural in character: it did not extinguish the rent obligation but corrected its apportionment. It belongs to the family of original writs issued out of Chancery to initiate common law proceedings and reflects the medieval English court's effort to police the fairness of distress as a self-help remedy.
Common Confusion
The writ appears in historical sources under at least three variant spellings or titles. Burrill records that Fitzherbert calls it De deonerando pro rata portione, while the Register of Writs uses De onerando secundum ratum portionis. The truncated form De onerando pro rata por (as commonly abbreviated in legal tables and indices) drops the final syllable of portione. Researchers encountering any of these variants in a source are looking at the same writ. The inconsistency is a scribal and editorial artifact, not a difference in legal substance.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is almost exclusively a research artifact. No modern equivalent writ exists; the remedy it provided has long been absorbed into equitable contribution doctrine and statutory co-tenancy law. A researcher is most likely to encounter it in one of three contexts:
First, in reading medieval and early modern English plea rolls, register entries, or treatises such as Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium. The variant titles will appear without cross-reference, and failing to recognize them as identical can send a researcher chasing phantom distinctions.
Second, in American colonial and early republic materials that catalogued English writs as part of received common law. Compilers of writ registers and form books often reproduced these Latin titles verbatim. Their presence in an American source does not mean the writ was regularly used in that jurisdiction — many were copied as a matter of learned form rather than living practice.
Third, as a doctrinal ancestor when tracing the history of contribution and apportionment among co-tenants. The writ is an early common law recognition of the principle that co-tenants should not bear disproportionate burdens — a principle that surfaces later in equity and eventually in modern partition and co-tenancy statutes. Understanding the writ helps contextualize how that principle migrated from a specific procedural remedy to a general equitable rule.
Researchers should note that the writ's home sources — the Registrum Omnium Brevium (Register of Original Writs) and Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium — are the authoritative reference points. Burrill cites both. Secondary dictionary treatment is thin; this is a term where the historical primary sources carry more information than any digest entry.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the essential reference: the writ lay for a joint tenant or tenant in common distrained for more rent than his proportionate share warranted, and relief took the form of charging each holder according to his ratable proportion. Burrill identifies the Register of Original Writs (folio 182) and Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium (234 H) as the primary authorities and notes the title discrepancy between those two sources.
No other source dictionary in the Law Mind corpus covers this term. The entry in Burrill is brief, consistent with treatment of obsolete procedural writs that had limited doctrinal development. Historical dictionaries generally do not expand on the writ's procedural mechanics or its relationship to the broader law of distress — researchers needing that context must go to Fitzherbert or to secondary histories of English real property procedure.
Jurisdictional Note
This writ is a product of the English common law writ system and has no direct counterpart in American or other common law jurisdictions as a named remedy. Its underlying principle — proportionate allocation of rent burden among co-tenants — is recognized across common law jurisdictions, but through different procedural vehicles. Research outside of English legal history contexts should focus on contribution, apportionment, or co-tenancy doctrine rather than the writ itself.