Definition
In civil law, the natural produce or offspring of animals and the fruits of other property, acquired by the owner by virtue of their right of ownership. The term encompasses both the young born of animals and the yield of productive property more broadly, treating such natural increase as belonging to the owner of the principal thing from which it derives.
Why It Matters in Research
FEOTURA is a narrow term of classical civil law heritage, appearing rarely outside Roman-law-influenced treatises and historical legal texts. Researchers encountering it in primary sources should treat it as a civil law term of art tied to the doctrine of accession — the principle that the owner of a thing acquires ownership of its natural products. It belongs to the same conceptual cluster as fructus naturales (natural fruits) and partus (offspring of animals) in Roman and civilian jurisprudence.
The term will not surface in common law sources. If you are researching American or English property disputes involving animal offspring or natural yield, the controlling concepts are accession and the rule that the owner of the dam owns the offspring — not feotura. Encountering this term signals you are working in a civilian or mixed-jurisdiction source (e.g., Louisiana, Scotland, Quebec) or in a treatise writer translating Roman-law principles into English.
The single definition in the corpus — from Black's, attributing the term to Bowyer's Modern Civil Law — is thin. Bowyer's text is an English-language digest of civil law doctrine, and the citation points to a secondary synthesis rather than a primary Roman law source. Researchers seeking deeper grounding should look to the underlying civilian sources on fructus and partus rather than relying on the Black's capsule definition alone.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) provides the only entry for this term in the Law Mind corpus. The definition is brief and entirely derivative of Bowyer's Modern Civil Law (Chapter 14, p. 81), which itself synthesizes civilian doctrine for an English-reading audience. Black's does not trace the term to a specific Roman law source, and no competing definition from other historical dictionaries is available for comparison.
The term does not appear in common law lexicographers such as Bouvier or in Tomlin's Law Dictionary, which is consistent with its purely civilian character. Its inclusion in Black's reflects that dictionary's practice of cataloguing civil law terminology alongside common law terms — useful for comparative research but not evidence that the term had active use in American or English courts.
Jurisdictional Note
FEOTURA belongs to the civil law tradition and would be most relevant in mixed-jurisdiction research involving Louisiana, Quebec, or Scottish law, or in historical comparative law scholarship. It has no recognized role in common law property doctrine.