Definition
To disinherit; to formally exclude a person — typically a natural heir — from an inheritance. In Scots law, exheredation was a deliberate testamentary act by which a testator cut off an heir who would otherwise have succeeded to the estate. The term describes both the act of exclusion and, in some usages, the legal instrument or declaration by which that exclusion was effected.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To disinherit.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To disinherit. Marked as rare.
The common and legal meanings are effectively identical in substance, but the gap worth noting is register and context: in ordinary English "disinherit" does the same work and is universally understood, while "exheredate" is a term of art that appears almost exclusively in Scots law sources and older civil-law-influenced texts. A researcher encountering it in a modern document is almost certainly reading historical material or a formal legal instrument of Scottish origin.
Common Confusion
The first edition of Black's Law Dictionary contains a transcription anomaly in the exheredate entry: the definition runs together with unrelated exhibit material, including references to the Digest and physical production of documents. This is an editorial error in the source text, not a secondary meaning of exheredate. Researchers working from the first edition should rely on the cleaner second-edition entry, which correctly limits the definition to the Scots law disinheritance meaning.
Why It Matters in Research
Exheredate is a narrow, archaic term of Scots and civil law provenance. It surfaces in historical succession documents, Scottish estate records, and texts drawing on Roman law concepts of disinheritance. Researchers should be aware of three navigational points.
First, the term does not appear in English common law with any regularity. Its natural home is Scots private law, where formal rules governed a testator's power to exclude heirs — including the concept of legitim (the protected share of children), which placed limits on how far a parent could exheredate a child. A document using this term is almost always either Scottish, or written by a civilian-trained lawyer.
Second, because exheredation in Scots law intersected with legitim and the rules governing what portion of an estate could not be freely disposed of, the term carries substantive legal weight beyond mere synonym for "disinherit." To exheredate was to trigger specific legal consequences, not simply to omit an heir from a will.
Third, the first-edition Black's entry is unreliable due to the typesetting confusion described above. Any research relying on that entry for meaning should cross-check against the second edition.
Historical Dictionary Support
Both editions of Black's agree on the core meaning: to disinherit or exclude from an inheritance, situated in Scots law. The second edition is the more reliable source, presenting a clean, unambiguous entry. The first edition's conflation with exhibit material appears to be a compositor's error and should be disregarded for definitional purposes.
Webster's 1913 confirms the term existed in general English usage but flags it as rare — consistent with its specialized legal register. No historical source suggests the term ever carried a meaning in English law beyond disinheritance.
What the historical dictionaries do not address is the civil law background of the term. The Roman law concept of exheredatio — the formal disinheritance of sui heredes — underlies Scots usage, and understanding that connection helps researchers interpret older Scottish texts that use the term in technically precise ways.
Jurisdictional Note
Exheredate is primarily a term of Scots law. It does not appear as a term of art in English common law jurisdictions, and modern U.S. legal sources do not use it. Researchers working in Scottish succession law, comparative private law, or historical estate records are the most likely to encounter it in operative legal documents.