Definition
In Roman and civil law, expilatio is the offense of unlawfully taking or appropriating property belonging to a succession — that is, property that formed part of a deceased person's estate — during the interval between the decedent's death and the heir's formal acceptance or taking possession of the inheritance. The term describes a wrong that occupies a precise gap in classical legal categories: it is neither ordinary theft nor a simple civil trespass, but a distinct offense targeting the vulnerable period when estate property is, technically, ownerless.
Why It Matters in Research
Expilatio is a term of art from Roman law that surfaces almost exclusively in civil law research, historical legal scholarship, and comparative law contexts. Researchers working in common law sources will rarely encounter it outside of treatises engaging Roman or continental doctrine. Its significance lies in what it reveals about the architecture of Roman property and succession law: the Romans recognized that the legal categories of furtum (theft) and ordinary civil liability did not cleanly cover wrongs committed against property in a succession before an heir had vested possession, and they created a separate offense to fill that gap.
For researchers using the Law Mind corpus, expilatio is most likely to appear in:
- Civil law treatises and digests, particularly works drawing on the Corpus Juris Civilis
- Comparative law discussions contrasting Roman succession doctrine with common law approaches to estate property
- Historical treatments of the law of theft and its limits, where the Roman distinction between furtum and expilatio is used to illustrate the boundary conditions of larceny doctrine
Be alert to terminological slippage in older English-language sources, which sometimes use "expilatio" loosely to mean any misappropriation of estate assets, collapsing the technical Roman distinction. The precise Roman meaning requires that the property be in the interval state — belonging to no living person yet — which is the entire point of the category.
Historical Dictionary Support
Both editions of Black's Law Dictionary give virtually identical definitions, and both agree on the essential doctrinal point: expilatio is not furtum because the property in question belongs neither to the deceased (who no longer exists as a legal person) nor to the heir (who has not yet taken possession). The entry is brief in both editions and offers no further elaboration on the specific remedies available under Roman law or how the offense was prosecuted.
What the Black's entries do not supply — and what researchers may need to seek in civilian treatises — is any account of how Roman law actually addressed expilatio procedurally. The Digest of Justinian (Digest 47.19) treats expilatio and makes clear that a praetorian action, rather than the standard actio furti, was the appropriate remedy. The Black's entries capture the definitional gap but are silent on the remedial structure, which is often what comparative law researchers need most.
Jurisdictional Note
Expilatio as a distinct legal category has no direct counterpart in Anglo-American common law. Common law systems handle misappropriation of estate assets through executor and administrator liability, probate court jurisdiction, and in some cases theft or conversion statutes. Researchers working in Louisiana, Quebec, or other mixed civil law jurisdictions may encounter expilatio doctrine in historical sources, but modern statutory law in those systems has generally absorbed the concept into broader succession and estate administration frameworks.