Definition
"Delivered" in legal usage describes the act of transferring possession, control, or a legal instrument from one party to another in a manner that satisfies the legal requirements for that transfer to be effective. The term operates across multiple legal contexts:
1. Delivery of deeds and instruments. A deed or written instrument is not legally operative until it is delivered — that is, until the grantor manifests an intent that the instrument take immediate effect. Physical handover is neither strictly required nor always sufficient; intent governs.
2. Delivery of possession (property law). A landlord's obligation to deliver possession of leased premises means placing the tenant in actual, unencumbered occupancy at the start of the tenancy. This is distinct from merely making the premises legally available.
3. Delivery of goods (contract and commercial law). In sale-of-goods contexts, delivery means the voluntary transfer of possession of goods to the buyer, completing a material obligation under the contract. Timing, method, and risk of loss rules attach to the moment of delivery.
4. Delivery of a verdict or judgment. A court or jury is said to deliver a verdict or judgment when it formally announces and records its decision, completing that procedural act.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "That has been, or will be, delivered in a specific manner."
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To deliver means to set free, to hand over, to give forth, or to utter — carrying a general sense of conveyance or release from one person or place to another.
Editorial note: The common meaning of delivered — simple physical handover — understates the legal concept considerably. In law, delivery is a term of art requiring not just the act of transfer but the requisite intent, making it possible for something to be physically handed over without being legally delivered, or legally delivered without changing hands at all (as with a deed held in escrow).
Common Confusion
"Delivered" is often conflated with mere physical transfer. A deed placed in a grantor's desk drawer with instructions to hand it over only after death has not been delivered in the legal sense; it lacks present operative intent. Conversely, a deed handed to an escrow agent can constitute legal delivery immediately, depending on the conditions attached. Researchers working with historical conveyancing records should not assume physical custody equals legal delivery. In landlord-tenant law, "delivery of possession" is also distinct from "delivery of the lease instrument" — two separate legal events that may occur at different times and have different legal consequences.
Why It Matters in Research
The term "delivered" is one of the most context-dependent words in the legal corpus. Its meaning shifts substantially depending on whether the surrounding document concerns conveyancing, landlord-tenant obligations, commercial sales, or procedural records — and historical sources rarely flag that ambiguity explicitly.
For property researchers: The landlord's duty to deliver possession has a split treatment in American jurisdictions (English rule vs. American rule), and older cases and treatises often assume the English rule without stating so. The Law Mind Property Law Encyclopedia entry on this point is a critical companion for interpreting pre-20th-century lease disputes.
For conveyancing researchers: In deed records and historical land transfer documents, the word "delivered" (often appearing in the attestation clause as "signed, sealed, and delivered") is a formal recital, not a factual description of what physically occurred. Treat it as a legal conclusion, not evidence of the mechanics of transfer.
For commercial law researchers: The meaning of delivery in goods transactions was substantially systematized by the Uniform Commercial Code in the mid-20th century. Pre-UCC sources, including 19th-century treatises and cases, use delivery in ways that may not map cleanly onto modern UCC concepts of tender, shipment, and risk of loss.
Jurisdictional traps: The English rule (that a landlord must actually deliver physical possession, not merely legal right to possess) is followed in many American states but rejected in others. A source that seems to state the law of delivery of possession as universal may be silently assuming one side of this split.
Historical Dictionary Support
The Rapalje & Lawrence entry provided under this term describes the Court of Delegates — an English ecclesiastical appeals tribunal abolished in the early 19th century — which is almost certainly a misfiled or cross-referenced entry unrelated to the legal term "delivered" as a standalone concept. Researchers should treat that entry as inapplicable here. It reflects a known hazard in historical legal dictionaries: adjacent or sequential entries sometimes appear under the wrong headword in digitized or reprinted editions.
Rapalje & Lawrence and contemporaneous historical dictionaries generally do not give "delivered" its own dedicated treatment as a freestanding term; it appears instead within definitions of "delivery," "deed," and related headwords. This absence from the historical dictionary record is itself instructive — 19th-century practitioners understood "delivered" as the past-participial form of the foundational concept "delivery," and legal meaning was unpacked there rather than at the adjective form.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Law Mind Property Law Encyclopedia: Landlord-Tenant — Landlord's Duty to Deliver Possession (property_21)