FUTURI

Definition

A Latin term meaning "those who are to be" or "future persons" — that is, all persons who will exist in time to come. In legal usage, futuri appears almost exclusively as a fixed element of the formal opening clause of old English and medieval conveyancing instruments. The standard phrase reads: Sciant præsentes et futuri, quod ego talis, dedi et concessi — rendered in English as "Let all men now living and to come know that I, [name], have given and granted." The term thus functioned not as a substantive legal concept but as a term of art within a ritualized salutation, asserting that the deed's notice and binding force extended to future generations as well as present witnesses.

Common Confusion

Futuri is occasionally grouped mentally with terms of future interest in property law — executory interests, remainders, possibilities of reverter — but it has no functional relationship to those concepts. It is a word of address and notice, not a word of limitation or grant. It describes the audience of the deed, not any interest being conveyed.

Why It Matters in Research

Researchers working with medieval English land records, monastic cartularies, royal charters, or early common law pleadings will encounter futuri repeatedly in the opening formulae of documents. Recognizing it as a standard, non-operative term of the deed's salutation — rather than a term creating or describing a legal interest — prevents misreading. The phrase sciant præsentes et futuri was the dominant opening convention in English conveyancing from the Norman period through the late medieval era, and its presence is a reliable dating and authenticity signal for documents of that period. After the Statute of Uses (1536) and the gradual standardization of modern conveyancing forms, the elaborate Latin salutation fell away; encountering futuri in a post-Tudor document would itself be anomalous and worth noting. Burrill notes that the reference to future persons took several variant forms in ancient deeds — including Noverint omnes visuri vel audituri ("Know all who shall see or hear") — and researchers should be alert to these equivalents when indexing or searching corpus materials by formula type rather than by fixed phrase.

Historical Dictionary Support

All three source dictionaries agree on the core meaning and cite the same passage from Bracton (fol. 34b) as authority. Black's (both editions) and Burrill are consistent in treating futuri as a term of art within a fixed conveyancing formula rather than as a freestanding legal concept with independent doctrinal content. Burrill adds the most useful contextual detail, noting that the future-reference formula appeared in multiple variant expressions across ancient deeds — a point the Black's entries omit. None of the historical dictionaries elaborate on the functional purpose of the clause (binding successors, establishing notice to future claimants), which is where modern property scholarship adds depth. The Bracton citation in all three sources is genuine; the relevant passage discusses the proper form of a deed's commencement.

Jurisdictional Note

Futuri as a term of art is specific to the English and Anglo-Norman conveyancing tradition and its derivatives. It does not appear as operative terminology in civil law systems, though analogous opening formulae exist in medieval continental instruments.

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