EXPILATION - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

EXPILATIONAuthored

The Law Mind • 1029 words

Definition

In civil law, expilation is the crime of abstracting or carrying off goods belonging to a decedent's estate — that is, the property of a succession — before the heir has taken possession. It occupies a distinct legal category from ordinary theft on the theory that, at the moment of abstraction, the goods do not belong to the deceased (who is dead) nor yet to the heir (who has not yet accepted the succession). Because the element of taking another's property is technically absent at that transitional moment, the act falls outside the classical definition of theft while still constituting a punishable wrong.

Rapalje & Lawrence extend the term to encompass two additional meanings: robbery generally, and the commission of waste upon land to the loss of the heir. These meanings share a common thread — wrongful deprivation of what belongs or will belong to another by succession — but the estate-goods sense is the term's primary and most technically precise usage.

Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Not in standard modern dictionaries as a living English word. Effectively obsolete in ordinary usage.

Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "The act of expilating or stripping off; plunder; pillage. [Obs.]" Webster's illustrates with "this ravenous expilation of the state" — using the word as a broad synonym for pillage or spoliation.

The gap between the common and legal meaning is meaningful. In ordinary historical usage, expilation was simply a vivid word for plunder or stripping bare, applicable to anything from a treasury to a battlefield. In civil law, the term is narrowly technical: it describes a specific offense defined by the peculiar ownership gap that exists between death and acceptance of succession. The legal sense is not just "stealing from an estate" — it is a category of wrong invented precisely because such taking could not, under strict analysis, be called theft at all.

Common Confusion

Expilation is sometimes loosely equated with theft from an estate or with embezzlement by an executor or administrator. These are distinct. Theft and embezzlement require that the property belong to someone at the moment of taking; expilation was recognized as a separate offense precisely because the goods of a succession occupy an interstitial ownership status. Common-law jurisdictions addressed this gap differently — through the relation-back doctrine (see below) — making expilation as a discrete legal category largely unnecessary and therefore rarely encountered in common-law sources.

Why It Matters in Research

Researchers will encounter expilation almost exclusively in sources dealing with Roman law, civil-law jurisdictions (particularly French and Louisiana law), and in treatises on succession. Several practical traps exist.

First, the term is nearly absent from common-law case law for a structural reason: the common law solved the ownership-gap problem by a different mechanism. The grant of letters testamentary or letters of administration relates back to the time of the decedent's death, vesting the estate's property in the personal representative from that moment. Under this relation-back doctrine, taking estate goods before administration is established can still constitute theft because, retroactively, the property is treated as belonging to the administrator from the moment of death. The civil-law concept of expilation was therefore never needed in common-law systems and does not appear as a standalone charge in English or American criminal law.

Second, the broader meanings noted by Rapalje & Lawrence — waste on land to the loss of the heir, and robbery generally — reflect older usage that has not survived even in civil-law contexts. If a historical source uses "expilation" in a land-law context, it is likely drawing on this archaic secondary sense rather than the succession-goods meaning. Do not assume the succession context.

Third, researchers working in Louisiana law, Quebec law, or comparative civil-law materials will find the concept embedded in discussions of succession, heritability, and the rights of heirs prior to acceptance. The Louisiana Civil Code tradition, drawing directly from French law, is the most likely American corpus in which the term appears with legal force.

Finally, note that the related noun expilator (a robber or plunderer, per Rapalje & Lawrence) may appear in older Latin-language legal texts or glossaries and should not be confused with executor or administrator, roles it superficially resembles in succession contexts.

Historical Dictionary Support

Bouvier's treatment is the most analytically useful of the historical sources. He correctly identifies the civil-law foundation of the offense and explains the ownership-gap rationale with precision: the property no longer belongs to the deceased, nor to the heir before acceptance, creating a conceptual no-man's-land in which classical theft cannot lie. Bouvier then immediately notes the common-law relation-back solution — a rare instance of Bouvier doing comparative legal work within a single entry, and a useful signal to researchers that this term marks a genuine doctrinal fork between the two systems.

Rapalje & Lawrence are terser but usefully expand the definitional scope to include waste on land and general robbery, reflecting the term's broader historical usage before it narrowed to the succession-goods sense. Their entry for expilator confirms that the term carried a general plunderer meaning in addition to its technical one.

Webster's 1913 "ravenous expilation of the state" illustrates the rhetorical, non-technical use — plunder as a political metaphor — which is distinct from either the civil-law technical sense or the waste-on-land sense. Researchers encountering the word in historical political writing should not assume any legal-technical content.

None of the historical sources addresses expilation in the context of modern estate administration, probate codes, or criminal statutes, because the term did not migrate into those frameworks.

Jurisdictional Note

Expilation as a distinct legal category is a civil-law concept with no independent doctrinal life in common-law jurisdictions. Researchers working in Louisiana, Quebec, or comparative succession law will encounter it as a live concept; those working in any other American state or in English law will find it, if at all, only in historical treatises or as borrowed vocabulary in academic writing.

EXPILATIONmain

Bouvier's Law Dictionary • 1928

site does not necessarily discredit their testimony but merely emphasizes the fact that their opinions are to be regarded as opinions, merely, and a decision rendered between them; Hall, J., in 4 Fish. 12. A patent expert is in effect an "auxiliary counsel" who argues upon the law and the facts; 28 Fed. Rep. 818. While expert evidence is not conclusive on the jury; 1 Fish. 17; and is to be judged by the same standards as ordinary evidence; 27 Fed. Rep. 691; 4 Fish. 404; 1 Sawyer 512;1 Fish. 298; and to be accorded by the jury such weight as they see fit; 1 Fish. 351; 6 McLean 303; 3 id. 432; it is nevertheless of great value in patent cases, 2 Fish. 465; 1 id. 133, 198, 461; 1 Bond 254; 5 McLean 44; 3 Story 742; 2 Robb 288; 3 McLean 432. The value of such testimony depends on the skill, not the number; 4 McLean 70; and is to be measured by their reasons; 3 Blatchf. 184; 4 Fish. 29, 232, 468. There are two classes of patent experts, as is clearly shown by an able writer, scientific and mechanical, each having a distinct sphere. The scientific expert is one familiarized by his studies and experi- ments with the principles of a science and qualified to understand, distinguish, and explain the subject-matter and application thereto of such science. His services are invoked to determine the character and scope of an invention with, reference to the condition of the art at the date of its production. His testimony is directed to the question whether the alleged invention is the result of an inventive act; whether it embraces or excludes a different inven- tion or is substantially the same in prin- ciple, function, or effect with any other. The mechanical expert represents the skilled workman in his art, who by practi- cal training in it could comprehend and apply to it various instrumentsand methods. His evidence will bear upon the defence of want of novelty, prior patent, inutility of the invention, or ambiguity of the descrip- tion in the specification of the patent. One person may appear in both capacities. 3 Rob. Pat. § 1013. See Curt. Pat. § 479. Expert testimony is admissible upon questions for the court as well as upon those for the jury, where it can be properly applied to the subject-matter of the ques- tion as the construction of the patent and whether a prior patent covers the same invention; 3 Rob. Pat. § 1014. In dealing with such questions the court is at liberty to admit expert evidence, but cannot be compelled to do so, and it is not error to refuse it; id.; 1 Fish. 487; 21 How. 88. It has been a matter of grave discussion whether an expert is bound to testify on matters of opinion without extra compensa- tion, the weight of decisions being that he is not bound to do so; 1 C. & K. 25; Sprague 276; 5 So. L. Rev. 793; 59 Ind. 15; 60 Ark. 508; contra, 6 Cent. L. J. 11; 21 D. C. 491; 59 Ind. 1, 15; 6 So. Law Rev. 706. It was recently held that, in the absence of statu- tory authority, one who testifies for the state in a criminal case as an expert cannot demand extra compensation as such, at least when not compelled to make any pre- liminary examination or preparation, or to attend and listen to the testimony; 60 Ark. 204. When no demand is made in advance for special compensation, an expert witness can recover oniy the statutory witness fees; 3 Colo. App. 177. See, generally, as to who are experts, and the admissibility of their evidence, 1 Greenl. Ev. 440; Tayl. Εν. 1209; 3 Dougl. 157; 2 Mood. & M. 75; 9 Conn. 55; 17 Pick. 497; 12 La. Ann. 183; 28 Am. L. Reg. 529, 593; 1 Am. L. Rev. 45; 5 id. 227, 428; 22 Alb. L. J. 365; 77 Cal. 579; 93 Mich. 511; 1 Misc. Rep. 354; 98 Ala. 285; 143 Ill. 571; 160 Mass. 131; Hershell, How to Use Experts; Etting, Exp. Ev. See also OPINION; PAT- ENT; HYPOTHETICAL QUESTION.

EXPILATIONmain

Bouvier's Law Dictionary • 1928

In Civil Law. The crime of abstracting the goods of a succes- sion. This is said not to be a theft, because the property no longer belongs to the deceased, nor to the heir before he has taken possession. In the common faw, the grant of letters testamentary, or letters of administration, relates back to the time of the death of the testator or intestate: so that the property of the estate is vested in the executor or administrator from that period.

EXPILATIONmain

Rapalje & Lawrence • 1888

-Robbery; the act of committing waste upon land to the loss of the heir; also abstracting the goods of a succession. EXPILATOR.-A robber, or plunderer.

EXPILATIONn.

Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913

The act of expilating or stripping off; plunder; pillage. [Obs.] This ravenous expiation of the state. Daniel.

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