Definition
A Latin phrase from the civil law meaning "of the goods" or "of the property." It describes property that legally belongs to a person as part of their estate or patrimony, even if that person does not currently hold actual possession of it. The phrase signals a relationship of legal ownership or entitlement rather than physical custody of the thing.
The term appears most often in Roman and civil law contexts to characterize the scope of a legal action: a claim or remedy is available whenever property can be said to be "ex bonis" of a person — that is, forming part of their legal estate — regardless of whether it is currently in their hands.
Common Confusion
EX BONIS vs. IN BONIS. These two Latin phrases operate as a pair and are easily conflated. In bonis describes property that is actually in a person's possession — the goods are among their held assets in a physical or immediate sense. Ex bonis describes property that belongs to a person's estate or property rights without requiring actual possession. The practical difference matters in civil law actions: a remedy may lie even where in bonis does not apply, provided the property qualifies as ex bonis. Burrill's entry preserves the clearest illustration of this distinction, quoting the operative rule that an action shall lie "whether it be actually among his goods, or not, yet if it be of his goods."
Why It Matters in Research
This term belongs almost exclusively to civil law and Roman law scholarship. Researchers encountering ex bonis in historical sources — particularly in treatises engaging the ius commune, Justinianic texts, or early American and Scottish legal writing that drew on civilian learning — should not read it as a common law term of art. It has no direct common law equivalent, and treating it as equivalent to modern concepts like "ownership" or "title" risks anachronism.
The phrase appears in contexts discussing the scope of personal actions and the extent of a decedent's estate. In succession and inheritance research, ex bonis may surface when sources are distinguishing between what a testator or intestate decedent legally owned versus what was physically inventoried at death. That distinction could affect which claims fell within the estate and which heirs or creditors had standing to pursue them.
Researchers using Black's Law Dictionary in either its first or second edition should note that both entries cite Calvin — a reference to Johannes Calvinus's Magnum Lexicon Juridicum, a seventeenth-century civil law dictionary. This citation signals that the definition is derived from civilian scholarship, not from common law case authority. Do not expect to find this phrase operative in Anglo-American case reports; its appearance there would almost certainly be in a civilian or comparative law context.
In the Law Mind corpus, ex bonis is unlikely to appear in constitutional, criminal, or modern statutory materials. It is most likely encountered in historical property, succession, and civil law encyclopedia discussions, or in entries treating Roman law foundations of American property concepts.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's (1st and 2nd editions) and Burrill's Law Dictionary are in close agreement — all three rely on the same Calvinus source and render essentially the same definition. The differentiation between ex bonis and in bonis is consistent across all entries.
Burrill's entry is the most instructive because it preserves the Latin maxim that illustrates the practical operation of the distinction: "Sive in bonis sit, sive non, si tamen ex bonis sit, locum haec actio habebit." Translated, this reads: whether the thing is actually in his goods (possessed) or not, if it is nevertheless of his goods (part of his estate), the action shall lie. This formulation anchors the phrase in its procedural context — the availability of a civil law action — rather than treating it as a purely definitional abstraction.
All three historical dictionaries are silent on any common law application, which itself is informative: the phrase did not migrate into the working vocabulary of English common law courts in a way that generated independent definition.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
No Law Mind Encyclopedia entry directly addresses ex bonis or its civil law property context. The matching entries returned — covering ex parte orders of protection, Ex parte Young, and federal trade secrets seizure — share only the Latin prefix ex and are not substantively related. No cross-reference is warranted.