Definition
In English Chancery practice, *dives* is a Latin adjective meaning "rich" or "wealthy," used as the counterpart to *pauper* in the context of litigation costs. The term appears almost exclusively in the phrase **dives costs**, which refers to costs taxed on the ordinary scale — that is, the full costs to which a successful litigant is ordinarily entitled — as distinguished from the reduced costs awarded to a successful pauper litigant proceeding *in forma pauperis*. A pauper's costs recovery was historically limited to out-of-pocket expenses only; dives costs carried no such restriction.
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Common Language
**Modern common usage (Wiktionary):** Plural of "dive" (as in a plunging movement, or a disreputable establishment).
**Historical common usage (Webster's 1913):** The name popularly given to the rich man in the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke xvi. 19–31); hence, a name for a rich worldling.
The Webster's entry captures the actual source of the legal usage: *dives* is the Latin word for "rich man," which passed into popular English through the Vulgate rendering of the Lazarus parable. The legal term carries none of the moral or narrative freight of the biblical reference — it functions purely as the adjectival or nominal opposite of *pauper* in a procedural context. A researcher encountering *dives* in a Chancery document should not read any scriptural allusion into it; it is a technical cost-accounting label.
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Common Confusion
**Dives vs. pauper costs:** These are not merely different amounts — they operated under different procedural regimes. A litigant authorized to sue *in forma pauperis* was exempt from fees and could not be held liable for ordinary costs, but upon success could recover only actual out-of-pocket disbursements. Dives costs, by contrast, were the standard taxed costs awarded on the ordinary scale. The distinction matters when reading Chancery orders: an award of "dives costs" signals that the court was treating the recipient as a full-cost litigant, not as a privileged pauper party.
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Why It Matters in Research
*Dives* is a narrow, historically bounded term that appears in English Chancery practice materials and will rarely surface outside that context. Several research traps are worth flagging:
**Obsolescence:** The *in forma pauperis* regime that gave *dives costs* its meaning was substantially reformed in England through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The phrase belongs principally to pre-reform Chancery practice. Researchers using Law Mind's historical English equity materials should treat it as a period-specific term; do not assume it maps onto modern costs jurisprudence.
**American inapplicability:** The term does not appear to have gained independent traction in American practice. American courts and treatises developed their own vocabulary for costs distinctions, and the *dives*/*pauper* opposition in costs orders is essentially absent from the U.S. corpus. If the term surfaces in an American source, it is almost certainly a direct quotation from or reference to English authority.
**Corpus connections:** Entries for *in forma pauperis*, *pauper*, and *costs* in the Law Mind corpus will provide the surrounding procedural context necessary to understand how dives costs functioned. Daniell's *Chancery Practice* (cited by all three source dictionaries) is the key primary treatise.
**Indexing hazard:** Because "dives" has a common English meaning as the plural of "dive," full-text corpus searches will generate significant noise. Narrow searches by combining the term with "costs" or "pauper" to isolate the legal usage.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's (1st and 2nd editions) and Rapalje & Lawrence are in full agreement on substance, and all three entries trace to the same authority: Daniell's *Chancery Practice*, page 43. Rapalje & Lawrence adds the Latin gloss (*dives*, a rich man) and a secondary citation to Consolidated Orders xl. 5, which grounds the term in the procedural rules of the English Chancery Division rather than in case law. No divergence among the sources is present, which is consistent with the term's narrow, technical character.
Notably, none of the historical dictionaries situate the term within the broader history of *in forma pauperis* litigation or explain the policy rationale. The contrast between pauper costs and dives costs was not merely administrative; it reflected a substantive policy choice about how far the state's accommodation of impecunious litigants would extend. Historical sources are silent on this dimension, and researchers needing that background must look to the Chancery treatise literature directly.
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Jurisdictional Note
This term is specific to English Chancery practice and carries no recognized equivalent in American, Scottish, or other common law jurisdictions as a term of art. Modern English civil procedure has superseded the historical pauper/dives costs framework; the term is therefore of historical rather than current practical significance even in England.
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