Definition
An obsolete Law French term denoting the act of depositing a disputed thing or property with a neutral third party, to be held until ownership or entitlement is established by proof. The term describes a form of custodial arrangement interposed between competing claimants, preventing either from exercising control over the disputed item while the question of title or right remains unresolved.
Common Confusion
ENTIERCIR should not be confused with general escrow or interpleader, though the functional logic overlaps. Escrow involves a prearranged deposit pending fulfillment of a condition, typically in a transactional context. Interpleader is a procedural remedy by which a holder of disputed property forces competing claimants into court. Entiercir, by contrast, appears to describe an informal or preliminary custodial deposit pending proof of property — a concept closer to sequestration than to either modern mechanism.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is of interest primarily to researchers working in early Anglo-Norman legal texts, medieval English property law, or the history of disputed possession. Its appearance in historical materials signals a dispute over ownership or right where no immediate determination of title was possible, and where interim custody of the res itself was the operative legal act.
Researchers should be aware of several navigational challenges. First, Law French orthography was inconsistent across manuscripts and copyists, meaning the term may appear in variant spellings in primary sources. Second, because the concept predates formal interpleader procedure and modern escrow doctrine, searching for analogous modern terms will not retrieve historical instances of this practice. Third, Burrill cites Kelham's glossary of Norman and Old French law terms as his authority — researchers tracing this term should consult Kelham directly, as Burrill's entry is a condensation and may omit contextual nuance present in the original.
The term also illustrates a broader pattern in early English property law: disputes over ownership were frequently managed through physical custody arrangements rather than through immediate adjudication. Understanding entiercir in that context illuminates how medieval courts managed contested property in the period before robust possessory remedies were systematized.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the only entry among the Law Mind shelf sources. The definition is brief and derivative, relying entirely on Kelham's glossary of Law French terms. Burrill offers no elaboration on procedure, no illustrative context, and no indication of how frequently the term appeared in practice or in what courts it would have arisen.
The brevity of the entry is itself informative: by the mid-nineteenth century, when Burrill compiled his dictionary, entiercir had no living legal application. It appears as a historical artifact, preserved for completeness rather than practical guidance. Researchers should not expect to find this term in any common law source post-dating the medieval period, and its absence from later dictionaries — including Black's — confirms that it did not survive into modern legal vocabulary in any recognized form.
Jurisdictional Note
The term belongs to the Anglo-Norman legal tradition and would be encountered, if at all, in English historical sources. It has no recognized counterpart in American law and would not appear in Scottish, civilian, or other common law jurisdictions except by historical borrowing.