Definition
A term from Spanish law denoting judicial sequestration — the court-ordered deposit or detention of disputed property pending resolution of a title dispute. Under the framework set out in Las Partidas, fieldad was recognized in six specific circumstances where ownership of property was contested and a neutral custodial arrangement was required to preserve the res during litigation. The concept is functionally analogous to sequestration or interpleader deposit in common law systems, though it arose within a distinct civil law tradition.
Common Confusion
Fieldad is sometimes loosely rendered in English legal sources simply as "sequestration," which can mislead researchers into mapping common law sequestration doctrine onto what is a distinct civil law mechanism. Common law sequestration was used in a wider range of contexts — including enforcement against contumacious defendants — whereas fieldad, as described in Las Partidas, was specifically a title-dispute remedy with enumerated triggering conditions. Treating the terms as interchangeable without examining the underlying Spanish law framework risks anachronism and doctrinal error in historical property research.
Why It Matters in Research
Fieldad is a narrow term of art appearing almost exclusively in sources addressing Spanish colonial or civil law. Researchers are most likely to encounter it when working with materials touching on Spanish land grants, colonial property disputes, or the legal systems of territories that passed from Spanish to American jurisdiction — including Louisiana, Florida, Texas, California, and the Southwest. In those contexts, fieldad may appear in original Spanish-language legal instruments, early territorial court records, or treatises attempting to reconcile Spanish civil law concepts with emerging American common law frameworks.
The primary research trap is treating fieldad as a purely historical curiosity. In territories where Spanish law remained operative as a residual baseline — particularly Louisiana and early Texas — the mechanics of judicial deposit and sequestration carried real procedural weight in property disputes. A researcher encountering the term in a 19th-century land title controversy should look beyond the English gloss ("sequestration") and examine what the six recognized cases under Las Partidas actually permitted, since the conditions triggering fieldad were more constrained than the broader common law sequestration remedy.
Corpus connections: fieldad links naturally to research threads involving Las Partidas (the 13th-century Castilian legal code that governed Spanish colonial territories), the transition-era legal systems of former Spanish colonies, and comparative treatments of sequestration across civil and common law traditions. Researchers working the Louisiana civil law corpus or the Mexican land grant records of the American Southwest will find fieldad appearing alongside cognate terms such as depósito judicial and embargo.
Historical Dictionary Support
The four source dictionaries are in substantive agreement on the core definition: fieldad means sequestration or judicial deposit in Spanish law, triggered when title to property is in dispute, and governed by Las Partidas. The minor variation worth noting is Burrill's characterization as "judicial deposit" alongside "sequestration," which is the more precise translation — fieldad emphasizes the custodial placement of property with a neutral party rather than the broader punitive or enforcement connotations that "sequestration" sometimes carries in English legal usage.
Bouvier's is the most expansive entry, appending under the same headword the entirely distinct term FIELD-ALE (also rendered FILKDALE) — a medieval English custom involving the drinking of ale by bailiffs in the field at the hundred's expense, long prohibited by Bouvier's time. The juxtaposition is an artifact of alphabetical proximity, not conceptual connection. Researchers should not conflate the two, and the field-ale note belongs to an entirely separate line of English administrative and manorial law.
All four dictionaries cite Las Partidas, pt. 3, tit. 3, l. 1 as authority (Burrill cites tit. 9, a variation that may reflect a different edition or a transcription discrepancy). None of the dictionaries elaborate on what the six recognized cases of fieldad were, leaving that gap to be filled by direct consultation of Las Partidas.