Definition
A common law writ of formedon available to a person holding a remainder interest in land — or to that person's heirs or assigns — when a stranger wrongfully entered and withheld possession after the particular estate preceding the remainder came to an end without issue capable of inheriting. The writ allowed the remainderman to recover seisin of the land by vindicating the original form of the gift (forma donationis) that created the remainder.
Formedon was the general class of real action lying to enforce rights derived from a gift in tail or a conditional fee. It divided into three branches depending on the claimant's relationship to the original donation: formedon in the descender (for the donee's lineal heir), formedon in the remainder (for the remainderman), and formedon in the reverter (for the donor or the donor's heir). Formedon in the remainder is the middle branch, concerned not with descent through the donee's bloodline but with the independent future interest carved out for a third party at the time of the original conveyance.
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Common Confusion
Formedon in the remainder is frequently conflated with formedon in the reverter because both were triggered by failure of the particular estate. The distinction is structural: formedon in the reverter ran in favor of the original donor (or donor's heirs), whose interest sprang back upon failure of the gift; formedon in the remainder ran in favor of a designated third party whose remainder was expressly created by the same conveyance. A researcher encountering either writ in older pleading records must identify which branch is at issue before drawing conclusions about the claimant's relationship to the land or to the original grantor.
Formedon in the remainder should also be distinguished from the more general action of ejectment, which eventually displaced all three formedon writs in practice. Ejectment did not require the claimant to trace a particular form of gift; formedon in the remainder required precise pleading of the original donation and its terms.
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Core Elements
For the writ to lie, the following conditions had to be satisfied:
1. A valid gift creating a particular estate (life estate or fee tail) with an express remainder to a third person in tail or in fee.
2. Determination of the particular estate — most commonly by the death of the particular tenant without heritable issue.
3. Entry by a stranger into possession following that determination, excluding the remainderman.
4. The claimant's identity as the designated remainderman, or as heir or assign of that remainderman, capable of taking under the original form of the gift.
Failure on any element would defeat the writ. In particular, if the particular estate had not yet determined — if the life tenant or tenant in tail was still alive — the remainderman had no present right of possession and the writ would not lie.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term belongs almost entirely to the pre-modern common law of real actions and will appear in English legal records roughly from the thirteenth century through the seventeenth, with a sharp decline as ejectment became the universal substitute. American researchers will encounter it almost exclusively in colonial-era materials, early republic pleading manuals, and any treatise or digest drawing on Coke, Littleton, or Bracton.
The primary research trap is treating the three formedon branches as interchangeable. Case records, plea rolls, and older digests often abbreviate the writ simply as "formedon" without specifying the branch. Context — particularly the identity of the plaintiff and the plaintiff's relationship to the original gift — is the only reliable guide to which branch is actually at issue.
In historical property research, formedon in the remainder is evidence of a conveyancing structure involving a particular estate plus an express remainder, which matters for tracing chains of title. Finding this writ in a historical record tells you that the land was originally conveyed in a split form: someone held a possessory estate of limited duration, and a third party held a deferred future interest. This structure is the ancestor of the modern vested or contingent remainder and connects directly to the substantive doctrine treated in the encyclopedia entries cited above.
The Statute of Limitations aspect also matters: formedon writs were subject to limitation periods under the Statute of Westminster II (1285) and later statutes. By the time of the Limitation Act 1623 in England, formedon in the remainder was barred after twenty years. These limitation periods appear in early American statutes of limitations by adoption and influence. A researcher analyzing whether a historical land claim was time-barred must identify which branch of formedon applied before locating the correct limitation period.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the essential statement of the writ's elements: a gift of a particular estate with remainder over, failure of the particular estate without inheritable issue, and intrusion by a stranger against the remainderman. Burrill's entry (truncated in available sources) follows the standard structure traceable through Coke on Littleton and the older Year Book learning. The core formulation is stable across sources — there is no meaningful dispute among historical dictionaries about what the writ was or when it lay.
What historical dictionaries characteristically omit is any sustained account of how the writ functioned in practice relative to its competitors. By the sixteenth century, the action of ejectment was already encroaching; by the eighteenth, formedon in the remainder was largely a matter of historical learning rather than live procedure. Blackstone treats the formedon branches in his account of real actions knowing that ejectment had effectively rendered them obsolete. A researcher using Burrill or similar sources should be alert to the gap between formal doctrinal statement and practical usage — the dictionaries describe the law as written, not necessarily as practiced.
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Jurisdictional Note
In England, formedon writs were formally abolished by the Real Property Limitation Act 1833, which extinguished the action entirely. In the American states, the real actions including formedon were either abolished by early statute or simply fell into disuse as ejectment became universal. No American jurisdiction maintains formedon in the remainder as a live procedural vehicle. Researchers encountering the term in American sources are dealing with inherited English doctrine, historical pleading, or academic treatment of the common law background to modern future interests.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Future Interests — Remainder (Vested, Contingent, Subject to Open), The Law Mind Property Law Encyclopedia
Classification of Future Interests — Remainders, Reversions, Executory Interests, and Powers of Termination, The Law Mind Trusts, Estates & Probate Encyclopedia
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