Definition
A Latin term from old English law meaning that a person — typically a child or heir — had been "put out of the family": formally separated from the family household, provided with a portion of the family estate or inheritance, and thereby emancipated from parental authority. A son or daughter who was forisfamiliatus had received their share of the expected inheritance during the parent's lifetime and, in exchange, relinquished further claims against the family estate. The act of forisfamilitation effectively advanced and closed the heir's portion, treating the inter vivos transfer as a settlement of future inheritance rights.
Common Confusion
Forisfamiliatus is closely associated with — but distinct from — simple emancipation. Emancipation refers broadly to release from parental authority or servitude. Forisfamiliatus is the specifically patrimonial form: emancipation accomplished through the transfer of a property portion. A child could be emancipated without being forisfamiliatus, but a child who was forisfamiliatus was necessarily both emancipated and barred from further inheritance claims by virtue of having already received their share. Researchers should not treat the terms as interchangeable when reading medieval property records or pleadings.
Why It Matters in Research
This term surfaces almost exclusively in sources dealing with medieval English property law, inheritance, and feudal family structure — primarily in Bracton and in early common law treatises and year books. Its principal legal significance was exclusionary: a forisfamiliatus heir could be barred from inheriting again, because the advance portion was deemed a full settlement. When researching early inheritance disputes, descent of land, or claims by heirs in the medieval and early modern periods, encountering this term is a signal that the pleading or record is addressing whether an heir had already been "bought out" of the estate.
The term does not survive into modern legal usage in any meaningful practical sense. Researchers should not expect to encounter it in post-medieval case law except in historical discussion. It belongs firmly to the world of Bracton-era jurisprudence and the feudal household economy.
One navigational trap: because all three historical dictionary sources cite the same single reference — Bracton, folio 64 — the term's authority trail is narrow. Researchers relying on secondary dictionary sources alone will find little elaboration beyond that single citation. For substantive analysis, the primary source is Bracton's De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae, and researchers should go there directly rather than expecting the dictionaries to provide depth.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (both the first and second editions) and Burrill's Law Dictionary give identical, verbatim entries: "Put out of a family; portioned off; emancipated; forisfamiliated. Bract. fol. 64." This uniformity signals that all three sources drew from the same root authority without independent elaboration. The convergence is not corroboration — it is repetition from a single origin. Burrill adds the Latin derivation from forisfamiliare, which is useful for locating related forms of the term in Latin legal texts. None of the three sources attempts doctrinal explanation, context, or analysis of how the concept operated in practice. The historical dictionaries are, in this instance, terminological signposts rather than substantive guides.
Jurisdictional Note
Forisfamiliatus is a term of old English law with roots in medieval continental practice (the concept of forisfamilitation appears in Roman-influenced civil law traditions as well). It has no operative role in any modern common law jurisdiction. Its relevance is strictly historical and comparative.