Definition
Fosterlean is an archaic legal term carrying two distinct meanings under historical English law:
1. The remuneration or compensation fixed or paid for the rearing and maintenance of a foster child — that is, the sum owed to a person who takes in and raises a child not their own by birth.
2. The jointure of a wife — a provision of land or income settled upon a woman at or before marriage, to be enjoyed by her after her husband's death.
The term is drawn from early English legal usage and appears primarily in historical dictionaries tracing to Jacob's Law Dictionary. It has no active presence in modern statutory or common law.
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Common Confusion
The two meanings of fosterlean are historically unrelated in substance, and their pairing within a single term is a curiosity of older English legal vocabulary rather than a logical conceptual grouping. Researchers encountering the term must read context carefully: the foster-child compensation sense belongs to the law of maintenance and guardianship, while the jointure sense belongs to the law of dower, marital property, and estates. Conflating the two would produce significant misreading of any historical document in which the term appears.
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Why It Matters in Research
Fosterlean is a term you will encounter only in historical English legal sources, not in modern case law, statutes, or practice materials. Its research relevance is almost entirely archival and interpretive.
The chief trap is the dual meaning. Because historical dictionaries — Black's, Bouvier's, Rapalje & Lawrence — uniformly present both meanings without prioritization, a researcher reading a medieval or early modern document must determine from context which meaning applies. A document dealing with child maintenance or apprenticeship arrangements likely invokes the first sense. A document dealing with marriage settlements, dower rights, or testamentary provisions likely invokes the second.
The jointure meaning connects fosterlean to a substantial body of historical property law. Jointure — the settlement of a life estate upon a wife in exchange for her relinquishing dower rights — was a major instrument of English marital property practice from the Statute of Uses (1535) forward. Researchers working on equity, estates, or women's property rights in the pre-modern period will find the jointure body of law well-documented in the corpus; fosterlean itself is simply an older or regional label for the same concept in certain sources.
The foster-child compensation meaning connects to historical practices of child placement, wet-nursing, and informal guardianship that predate modern foster care systems entirely. The word "foster" in this context carries its older sense of physical nourishment and rearing rather than any state-supervised care relationship. Do not read modern child welfare law concepts backward into historical uses of this term.
All four dictionaries in the Law Mind corpus that contain this entry trace to Jacob's Law Dictionary as the authority. No independent analysis or elaboration appears in any of them. This means the Law Mind corpus essentially preserves a single chain of authority, not multiple corroborating sources, for this term.
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Historical Dictionary Support
The four historical sources — Black's (1st and 2nd editions), Rapalje & Lawrence, and Bouvier's — are in complete agreement on both meanings and offer nearly identical wording, all tracing back to Jacob. Bouvier's adds a citation to "Encyc. Dict." alongside Jacob, suggesting the term had some presence in general encyclopedic references of the period, though Bouvier provides no elaboration.
None of the sources contextualizes either meaning within a broader legal framework, nor do any of them cite cases, statutes, or treatises beyond Jacob. This is a thin evidentiary record. Researchers should treat the historical dictionaries as signals pointing toward older primary sources — particularly early English legal records, Year Books, or local custom documents — rather than as authoritative standalone treatments.
The Rapalje & Lawrence entry is notable for embedding the fosterlean definition within a run of entries that includes "FOUND" and "FOUND COMMITTING," suggesting the term appeared in alphabetical sequence without extended treatment. This confirms fosterlean was not a term of significant practical controversy or litigation in the period when these dictionaries were compiled.
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