EXCHEAT

4 definitions found across Law Mind sources

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EXCHEATAuthored
The Law Mind • 695 words
Definition
An obsolete spelling variant of ESCHEAT. The term carries no independent legal meaning distinct from escheat — the reversion of property to the crown (or, in American law, to the state) when a person dies without heirs or when property is abandoned without a legal owner capable of holding title. See ESCHEAT for the operative legal definition.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Obsolete form of escheat. Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "See Escheat." Marked as obsolete; cited to Spenser. The term appears in early English legal and literary texts as a direct orthographic variant of escheat, not as a term of art with any divergent meaning. Researchers encountering excheat in a historical document should treat it as identical in substance to escheat and consult the escheat entry for full legal analysis.
Common Confusion
Excheat and exchequer share a common etymological root — both derive from the Latin scaccarium, referring to the checkered cloth covering the accounting table used in royal finance — but they are functionally distinct legal concepts. Excheat denotes the forfeiture or reversion of property; the Exchequer was the royal financial institution responsible for, among other things, receiving escheated revenues. Rapalje & Lawrence's entry conflates the two terms typographically, listing excheat but redirecting immediately to the Exchequer definition. Researchers should not treat this as evidence that the terms were legally synonymous.
Why It Matters in Research
Excheat is a spelling trap in historical sources, particularly in pre-modern English legal manuscripts, early printed law books, and literary texts drawing on legal vocabulary. Researchers working in the Law Mind corpus who encounter excheat in a primary source should: 1. Treat the term as a direct equivalent of escheat and apply all doctrine, procedural rules, and historical analysis associated with that term. 2. Note that Rapalje & Lawrence's entry for excheat does not define the term on its own terms but instead redirects — first to escheat (substantively correct) and then, apparently in a printing or editorial error, immediately transitions into the entry for Exchequer. This layout creates a genuine risk of misreading: a researcher skimming the dictionary might walk away believing excheat and exchequer are more closely related in meaning than they are. They share etymology, not doctrine. 3. The Webster's 1913 and Wiktionary entries both confirm that excheat was already archaic by the nineteenth century. Encountering the form in a post-1700 legal document would be unusual and may signal either a highly conservative or archaic drafting style, a transcription or copying error from an older source, or a literary or antiquarian usage rather than operative legal language. No American jurisdiction uses excheat as a term of art. The word does not appear in modern statutes or case law. Any corpus hit for excheat in post-colonial American legal materials should be examined carefully for context before being treated as substantive legal usage.
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence is the sole shelf source for this entry, and its treatment of excheat is minimal: the entry consists of a cross-reference to escheat followed by what appears to be the beginning of a separate entry for Exchequer. This is almost certainly a dictionary layout issue rather than a substantive claim about the relationship between the terms. The cross-reference to escheat is the only analytically useful piece of the entry. Webster's 1913 independently confirms the obsolescence of the form, citing Spenser — a literary reference that places the word's active use in the sixteenth century. No historical legal dictionary on the Law Mind shelf treats excheat as having a meaning distinguishable from escheat, and none offers doctrine, elements, or procedural content under this headword. All substantive historical analysis lives under ESCHEAT.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See the Law Mind Encyclopedia entry for ESCHEAT for full historical and doctrinal treatment, including the crown's escheatorial rights, the development of American state escheat law, and the procedural mechanics of escheat proceedings.
Related Terms
ESCHEAT (primary term — all doctrine resides here) EXCHEQUER (shares etymology; distinct in function) FORFEITURE (related concept; different trigger and mechanism) BONA VACANTIA (civil law parallel for ownerless property reverting to the state) ATTAINDER (historical overlap; property consequences of conviction)
EXCHEATmain
Rapalje & Lawrence • 1888
- See ESCHEAT. EXCHEQUER.-LOW LATIN: scaccarium. from the chequered cloth, resembling a chess board. which covered the table on which, when certain of the king's accounts were made up, the sums were marked and scored with counters 3 Bl. Com. 44. 1. A public office in England, which formerly consisted of two divisions-the receipt of the Act, 1866. For details, see H. Cox Inst. 678 et seq.; 2 Steph. Com. 528. For the history of the exchequer, see Mad. Exch.; Gilb. Exch. 2. The Court of Exchequer was originally a court having jurisdiction only in matters concerning the public revenue, e. g. in suits by the crown against its debtors; but it afterwards acquired (by the use of fictitious pleadings) jurisdiction in ordinary civil actions between subject and subject. It was formerly subdivided into a court of common law, and a court of equity; but by Stat. 5 Vict. c. 5, its equitable jurisdiction was transferred to the Court of Chancery, except in revenue matters. (Att.- Gen. v. Halling, 15 Mees. & W. 687; see Corporation of London v. Att.-Gen., 1 H. L. Cas. 440; Att.-Gen. v. Metr. D. Railway Co., 5 Ex. D. 218. See, also, INFORMATION). And by the Judicature Acts, 1873, 1875, the jurisdiction of the Court of Exchequer as a court of revenue, as well as a common law court, was transferred to the High Court of Justice. The judges of the Court of Exchequer, and their successors, continued to form a division of the High Court, called the "Exchequer Division," to which all causes which would formerly have been within the exclusive cognizance of the Court of Exchequer were assigned (Judicature Act, 1873, 16,34), until the three "common law" divisions of the High Court were merged into one. See BARON; HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE. EXCHEQUER BILLS.-Bills issued by the English government for the purpose of raising temporary loans, generally in anticipation of the supplies granted by parliament, and occasionally, for carrying on public works, &C. They entitle the bearer (or the person named in each bill, if the blank left for that purpose is filled up) to the sum for which they are issued, to be paid at a time to be fixed by advertisement, with interest in the meantime. (H. Cox, Eng. Gov. 193; Johns. Exch. Bills.) They are negotiable instruments. Wookey v. Pole, 4 Barn. & Ad. 1. EXCHEQUER CHAMBER.-An English court of error, (i. e. a court of appeal) from each of the three superior courts of common law, which consisted of the judges of the two courts other than that whose decision was being appealed against. Thus, when error was brought from a judgment of the Queen's Beuch, the Exchequer Chamber consisted of the judges of the Common Pleas and the Exchequer, and so
EXCHEATn.
Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913
See Escheat. [Obs.] Spenser.
excheatnoun
Wiktionary (English) • 2026
Wiktionary contributors • CC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
Extracted and formatted for display by Law Mind. Source link opens the current Wiktionary page and its contributor history; it is not a frozen copy of this extract.
Obsolete form of escheat.

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