FEOFFOR - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

FEOFFORAuthored

The Law Mind • 737 words

Definition

The party who makes a feoffment — that is, the grantor who transfers a freehold estate in land to another (the feoffee) by the common law ceremony of livery of seisin. The feoffor delivers possession of the land either by physical entry upon it or, where the land is in view, by symbolic gesture, thereby conveying the fee. The feoffor's role is the counterpart to the feoffee's: together they are the two principals in the feoffment transaction.

Common Confusion

FEOFFOR / FEOFFER / FEOFFEE: Three similar-looking terms that are distinct. Feoffor and feoffer are variant spellings of the same word — the grantor. Feoffee is the grantee — the person receiving the fee. Historical sources, including Burrill and Bouvier, sometimes use the forms interchangeably in spelling but never in function. In archival documents, misreading feoffee for feoffor (or vice versa) can reverse the direction of a conveyance entirely. Wiktionary treats feoffor as an alternative form of feoffer; both are correct.

Why It Matters in Research

Feoffor is a term rooted in the feudal common law of real property conveyance and is almost exclusively encountered in historical sources — English land records, medieval and early modern deeds, Year Books, and treatises through the eighteenth century. By the time recording statutes and modern deed formalities displaced livery of seisin, feoffor faded from active use and survives today mainly as a term of art in legal history and in the interpretation of old instruments.

Researchers working with historical land records, colonial-era American deeds, or early English conveyancing materials need to recognize feoffor quickly to identify which party held original title and which received it. Confusion between feoffor and feoffee can invert the chain of title. Because many historical manuscripts use abbreviated or phonetically variant spellings — feofor, feoffor, feoffour — corpus searches should account for spelling instability.

The term also surfaces in trust history: the use (a precursor to the modern trust) required identifying the feoffee to uses, making the feoffor's identity central to determining the beneficial interest. In that context, the feoffor's intent, as expressed in the feoffment deed or indenture, governed the equitable rights of cestuis que use.

In American legal history, feoffor appears through the colonial period but becomes rare after the Revolution as states adopted statutes of conveyances displacing common law formalities. English sources remain the primary corpus for the term's detailed treatment.

Historical Dictionary Support

The historical dictionaries converge on a single, unambiguous definition: the feoffor is the person making the feoffment and enfeoffing another in fee. Black's (both editions), Burrill, and Bouvier all anchor the definition to the same authority — Blackstone's Commentaries (2 Bl. Comm. 310) and Littleton's Tenures (§§ 1, 57) — without meaningful divergence.

Burrill's entry is the most substantive, noting that feoffment was completed by delivery of possession "upon, or within view of the hereditaments conveyed," and citing Butler's Co. Litt. Note 231 for the mechanics. Burrill also begins to describe the feoffment deed itself, signaling the connection between the feoffor's act and the documentary record that follows it.

Rapalje & Lawrence offer the thinnest entry, redirecting to FEOFFMENT rather than defining feoffor independently. Their inclusion of FEOH — "a fee or reward; wages; a stipend" — in the same section reflects the Saxon root of the fee concept but is not a definition of feoffor proper.

Bouvier adds the Saxon gloss (FEOH) with a cite to Spelman's Feuds, which is useful for researchers tracing the feudal etymology of the fee system but does not alter the operative definition.

No historical dictionary treats feoffor as having variant meanings or jurisdictional complexity. The term is narrow, stable across sources, and consistently defined by reference to the feoffment itself.

Encyclopedia Cross-Reference

See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Feoffment; Livery of Seisin; Uses and the Statute of Uses.

FEOFFORmain

Burrill's Law Dictionary • 1867

L. Fr. and Eng. [L. Fr. real hereditaments by delivery of the posfeffour; L. Lat. feoffator.] The person session upon, or within view of the hemaking a feoffment, or enfeoffing another reditaments conveyed. Butler's Co. Litt. in fee. 2 Bl. Com. 310. Litt. sect. 1, Note 231, lib. 3. 57. See Feoffment. 9 ave The deed, instrument or charter, (as it was formerly most commonly termed,) by which such a donation is expressed. 2 Bl. Com. 310. Shep. Touch. 203. 4 Kent's Com. 480.. See Feoffamentum, Charta. For a form of this kind of deed in the original Latin, see 2 Bl. Com. Appendix, No. 1. And see West's Symboleog. part. 1, lib. 2, sect. 235, et seq. Anciently, a feoffment might be without deed, the donation with which the livery was accompanied being merely oral, but it was usually put into writing. 1 Reeves' Hist. Eng. Law, 90. Poterit fieri donatio cum charta, vel sine charta. Bract. fol. 11 b. By the statute of frauds, a written instrument was expressly required to convey the fee. 1 Steph. Com. 218. See Stat. 8 & 9 Vict. c. 106, § 3. *** A feoffment originally meant the grant of a feud or fee, that is, a barony or knight's fee, for which certain services were due from the feoffee to the feoffor. This was the proper sense of the word; but by custom it came afterwards to signify also a grant (with livery of seisin) of a free inheritance to a man and his heirs, referring rather to the perpetuity of the estate than to the feudal tenure. 1 Reeves' Hist. Eng. Law, 90, 91. Mad. Form. Angl. Diss. p. 4. Butler's Note, 231, lib. 3. Co. Litt. It was for ages the only method (in ordinary use,) for conveying the freehold of land in possession, but has now fallen in great measure into disuse, even in England, having been almost entirely supplanted by some of that class of conveyances founded on the statute law of the realm. 1 Steph. Com. 467, 468. In American law, it is scarcely known. 2 Hilliard's Real Prop. 293, et seq. Littleton uses feoffment in its present form, but Britton writes it feffement.