Definition
Disherison is an archaic legal term meaning the act of depriving a person of an inheritance; disinheritance. It describes the deliberate exclusion of an heir — whether a child, spouse, or other person who might otherwise inherit — from a decedent's estate, typically by testamentary act. The term encompasses both the act itself and its legal effect: the stripping away of inheritance rights that would otherwise attach by operation of law or by reasonable expectation under a will.
In civil law traditions, disherison carried a more formal and technical meaning than in common law. Under Roman law and its successors, certain heirs (termed "necessary heirs" or "forced heirs") could not be disinherited without cause. Disherison of such heirs required an express act in the will, and if done without legally recognized grounds, the will could be challenged through the querela inofficiosi testamenti — a complaint that the will was "undutiful." This formal doctrine gave disherison a procedural as well as substantive dimension largely absent from English common law.
In English common law, no equivalent forced heirship rule applied to real property after early medieval restrictions fell away. A testator could disinherit any heir simply by disposing of property to others. Disherison therefore required no affirmative declaration; silence in the will was generally sufficient. The term appears in English legal writing chiefly as a descriptor of consequence rather than a formal legal procedure.
The term is now obsolete in active legal usage. Modern practitioners universally use DISINHERITANCE.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "The act of disheriting, disinheritance."
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "The act of disheriting, or debarring from inheritance; disinhersion."
The common and legal meanings are effectively identical in scope, but the legal term carries additional weight in civil law contexts that neither dictionary definition captures. In civil law jurisdictions, disherison was not simply a private testamentary act but a formal legal procedure with recognized grounds and consequences — a nuance invisible in the plain English sense of "depriving someone of an inheritance."
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Common Confusion
DISHERISON vs. DISINHERITANCE vs. PRETERITION: These terms are closely related but not identical in historical usage. Disherison and disinheritance are largely synonymous, with disherison the older form. Preterition is distinct: it refers specifically to the omission of a forced or pretermitted heir from a will — often unintentional — rather than a deliberate act of exclusion. In civil law systems, disherison required an express, intentional act; preterition could be inadvertent and carried different legal consequences, including potential nullification of the will or the heir's entitlement to an intestate share. Researchers working in Louisiana, Quebec, or Spanish colonial law materials should be especially careful not to conflate these terms.
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Why It Matters in Research
Disherison is a marker term for historical legal materials. Its presence in a document — whether a will, legal treatise, court opinion, or probate record — is itself useful chronological and jurisdictional evidence: it signals older drafting conventions and may indicate civil law influence.
Researchers in Anglo-American common law sources will encounter disherison primarily before the mid-nineteenth century, after which disinheritance becomes the dominant form. In Louisiana, which retained a civil law system, disherison remained a term of art with substantive content well into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, tied to forced heirship doctrine. Louisiana's Civil Code historically specified enumerated grounds for disherison of forced heirs, and a disherison without proper grounds was subject to nullification. This is categorically different from the common law context, where no such formal doctrine applied.
For researchers using the Law Mind corpus, note that Anderson's Dictionary of Law redirects to INHERIT without independent definition — a signal that the term was already receding from active American legal vocabulary when that dictionary was compiled. Black's (both editions) and Bouvier's explicitly flag it as obsolete. Rapalje & Lawrence provides the cleanest functional definition. Cross-reference materials on forced heirship, pretermitted heirs, and Louisiana succession law when disherison appears in civil law contexts.
Trap for researchers: Do not assume that disherison in a historical document means the same thing as modern disinheritance without checking the jurisdiction. In civil law contexts, the legal consequences and formal requirements may differ substantially.
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Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries converge on a single meaning — disinheritance, the deprivation of inheritance — and all treat the term as obsolete or near-obsolete. Black's (1st and 2nd editions) and Bouvier's are in complete agreement on both definition and obsolescence. Rapalje & Lawrence, characteristically spare, gives the functional definition without commentary. Anderson's offers no independent definition, directing readers instead to INHERIT.
The second edition of Black's adds a case citation — Abernethy v. Orton, 42 Or. 437 (1903) — the only source in the group to ground the term in actual litigation. That case is an Oregon probate dispute, confirming that disherison still appeared in American court proceedings in the early twentieth century even as the dictionaries were declaring it obsolete.
None of the historical dictionaries address the civil law dimension of the term or the distinction between common law and civil law treatment. For that dimension, researchers must look beyond these sources to civil law treatises and Louisiana-specific legal materials.
Webster's 1913 and Wiktionary track the legal sources closely, which is consistent with a term that has no significant divergence between its common and technical meanings — only a gap in technical depth.
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Jurisdictional Note
In Louisiana, disherison was a formal civil law concept tied to forced heirship, requiring enumerated grounds and express testamentary language; a disherison without legal cause could be challenged and voided. Louisiana's forced heirship rules have been substantially amended since 1995, reducing the class of forced heirs, but historical Louisiana materials require attention to this doctrine. In common law jurisdictions, no equivalent formal procedure existed, and the term functioned descriptively rather than as a term of art with procedural consequences.
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