Definition
To dispauper a litigant is to revoke the privilege of suing in forma pauperis — the court-granted status that allows an impoverished party to pursue litigation without paying ordinary court fees and costs. The revocation occurs mid-litigation, after the privilege has already been granted, when the party's circumstances change sufficiently to disqualify them from continued pauper status.
A litigant may be dispaupered on two grounds: (1) acquisition of property or assets — real or personal — sufficient to remove them from the category of poverty that justified the original grant; or (2) misconduct or other disqualifying conduct during the litigation. Once dispaupered, the party must proceed under ordinary court rules, including payment of fees and costs.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To deprive of the claim of a pauper to public legal support; to deprive of the privilege of suing in forma pauperis.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To deprive of the claim of a pauper to public support; to deprive of the privilege of suing in forma pauperis.
Editorial note: The common dictionaries track the legal meaning closely here, which is unusual. The only meaningful gap is that everyday usage of "dispauper" is essentially extinct — the word exists nowhere outside legal and quasi-legal contexts. A researcher encountering it in any document can treat it as a legal term of art without ambiguity.
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Why It Matters in Research
DISPAUPER is a term almost entirely confined to historical English practice and early American procedure, making it a signal word for corpus dating. Its appearance in a procedural document places the text firmly in an era when in forma pauperis status was a formally managed court privilege subject to active judicial supervision and revocation — not merely an administrative filing threshold as it functions today.
Researchers working with 18th- and 19th-century English or American court records should note that dispauper proceedings were a distinct procedural step, often triggered by the opposing party's motion upon discovery that the pauper litigant had acquired property or a legacy mid-suit. The term therefore frequently appears in procedural manuals, court minute books, and practice treatises of that period rather than in substantive opinions.
The concept has not disappeared — modern courts can and do revoke in forma pauperis status upon changed circumstances or a finding of bad faith — but the term DISPAUPER itself has fallen entirely from contemporary usage. Modern sources use phrases such as "revocation of IFP status" or "withdrawal of pauper's privilege." A researcher running keyword searches in modern databases will not find this term in modern opinions; searching historical treatises and early reporters is necessary to trace the doctrine's procedural lineage.
The connection to misconduct as a second ground for dispauper is worth flagging: historical sources treat abuse of process or deliberate misrepresentation of poverty as sufficient to trigger dispauper, a principle that persists in modern IFP jurisprudence under different terminology. Researchers connecting historical dispauper doctrine to modern IFP revocation should track this misconduct strand carefully, as it has had more doctrinal continuity than the asset-acquisition ground.
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Historical Dictionary Support
The historical sources converge tightly on definition and grounds. Black's (both editions), Bouvier's, and Burrill's all define dispauper as the revocation of an already-granted in forma pauperis privilege, triggered by changed financial circumstances or disqualifying conduct. Burrill cites Tidd's Practice for the proposition, grounding the term in English procedural authority. Anderson's entry offers no independent definition, directing the reader to the PAUPER entry instead — consistent with this term functioning as a derivative rather than a standalone doctrine.
The historical dictionaries are silent on the procedural mechanics of how dispauper was accomplished — who could move for it, what evidence was required, and what the timing rules were. Researchers needing that level of detail must go to the practice treatises directly, particularly Tidd's Practice and its American counterparts.
No significant divergence exists among the sources. The consistency itself is informative: dispauper was a settled, narrow term with a well-understood meaning across the relevant period, not a contested or evolving concept.
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Jurisdictional Note
Dispauper as a formal procedural term is primarily an English common law concept imported into early American practice. Modern American federal courts address the same function under statutory IFP frameworks. State practice varies considerably in how and whether IFP status can be formally revoked mid-litigation; researchers should not assume that historical dispauper doctrine maps cleanly onto any particular state's current IFP rules.
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