Definition
De rationabili parte bonorum (Latin: "of the reasonable part of goods") was a common law writ that entitled the wife and children of a deceased man to recover their proportionate share of his personal property from his executors. The writ provided a legal mechanism for surviving family members to enforce a customary right to a fixed portion of the decedent's movable estate, independent of any will or testamentary disposition.
Under the customary scheme the writ enforced, the deceased's personal estate was divided into thirds: one-third to the wife, one-third to the children, and one-third remaining freely disposable by the deceased — the so-called "dead man's part." Where the deceased left either a wife or children but not both, the estate split in two, with half going to the surviving class and half remaining at the deceased's disposal. The writ gave teeth to these entitlements by compelling executors to deliver the appropriate share.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is almost exclusively encountered in pre-modern English legal sources and in American legal writing of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that follows the English common law tradition. Researchers working in probate, succession, or family law history should treat it as a marker of the older customary law of personal property distribution, not as a continuing writ in modern practice.
The writ was effectively abolished in England by the Statute of Distributions (1670) and subsequent legislation, which replaced the customary thirds with a new statutory scheme. American reception of this doctrine was uneven: some jurisdictions briefly recognized the reasonable-part custom, but most colonial and early state legislatures moved quickly to statutory distribution schemes that displaced any common law writ remedy. Finding references to de rationabili parte bonorum in American sources after the late eighteenth century is unusual and likely signals a historical argument or a court tracing the roots of a statutory provision.
Researchers should note that the writ applied only to personal property — goods and chattels. It had no operation over real property, which was governed by entirely separate doctrines (dower, curtesy, descent). This boundary is critical: do not conflate this writ's scope with broader inheritance rights.
The Burrill entry abbreviates the full Latin phrase, citing the writ as "Breve de rationabili parte bonorum" — the full form found in the older plea books and register of writs. Searching historical sources under partial forms of the phrase (rationabili parte, reasonable part) will broaden results and is advisable when working with pre-1800 materials.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the core historical entry, tracing the writ to Blackstone's Commentaries (Book 2, Chapter 32) and Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium. Blackstone describes the custom of reasonable parts as formerly prevailing throughout England, noting that it had been abolished in most of the country by his time but survived in the province of York, Wales, and the City of London. Fitzherbert's treatment, cited in Burrill at F.N.B. 122, reflects the writ's procedural form as it appeared in the medieval register of writs.
Historical dictionaries generally agree on the basic structure: a writ running against executors, protecting the wife and children's share of personalty. Where the sources are thin is on the jurisdictional variation within England itself — the survival of the custom in York and London into the eighteenth century is noted by Blackstone but underemphasized in shorter dictionary treatments. Researchers relying solely on a dictionary entry risk missing that the custom had a longer practical life in some English jurisdictions than the general rule suggests.
No significant divergence appears among the historical sources on the substantive content of the writ, likely because it had fallen into disuse before legal lexicography became systematic.
Jurisdictional Note
The writ was an English common law form and never became a standard procedural instrument in American courts. American jurisdictions that recognized any analogous right to a reasonable part of a decedent's personalty generally implemented it through statute or absorbed it into broader distribution schemes. Researchers working in early American probate records should look to individual colony or state distribution statutes rather than assuming the writ itself was available.