Definition
A Latin maxim meaning literally "in the clouds." In law, the phrase describes property, a right, or an interest — most commonly an inheritance or freehold estate — that exists in legal contemplation but is not presently vested in any living person. The interest is said to be suspended, waiting to attach to a holder when the appropriate conditions are met. It is closely associated with the doctrine of abeyance, under which a freehold title temporarily has no ascertainable owner but is held, in legal fiction, by the law itself.
The phrase captures a specific metaphysical position in property law: the interest is real and enforceable, but it floats — unattached to a person — until the law identifies a proper recipient. A classic example is a fee simple subject to a condition or limitation where no current taker exists; the title does not vanish, it waits.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "In a state of suspension; nebulous and unfulfilled."
Historical common usage: The Latin phrase has no direct Webster's 1913 entry; its common figurative use in English approximates "up in the air" — uncertain, unresolved, or imprecise.
The gap matters. Common usage treats "in nubibus" as mere vagueness or uncertainty. The legal meaning is structurally precise: the interest exists with full legal force but is temporarily unanchored to any person. This is not doubt about whether the interest exists — it is certainty that it exists, combined with temporary uncertainty about who holds it.
Common Confusion
In nubibus is frequently conflated with in gremio legis ("in the bosom of the law"), and the historical sources use them almost interchangeably when describing abeyance. They are not synonyms. In nubibus describes the condition of the property interest — suspended, cloud-like, not yet settled. In gremio legis describes the custodian of that interest during suspension — the law itself acting as a temporary trustee. The two phrases describe the same situation from different angles. A researcher encountering one in a historical source should search for the other.
Why It Matters in Research
The phrase appears almost exclusively in historical property law materials, particularly in discussions of abeyance of freehold estates, the law of wreck, and the status of things belonging to no one (res nullius). Researchers should be alert to several navigational challenges.
First, the phrase marks a doctrinal moment, not a rule. When a historical source says an inheritance rests in nubibus, it signals that a gap in ownership has been identified — but the source may not resolve how or when the interest vests. Follow the surrounding discussion carefully for the vesting conditions.
Second, Burrill's entry extends the phrase beyond real property to objects that were anciently considered ownerless or in law's custody — including wreck and, under civil law, sacred and religious things. This broader usage appears in older common law treatises but drops out of later American legal writing. A researcher working in admiralty or ecclesiastical property contexts may encounter in nubibus in this wider sense and should not assume the real property meaning controls.
Third, the phrase is a signal of influence from Bracton and Littleton. Sources citing in nubibus are almost certainly drawing on the medieval common law tradition. Cross-referencing Littleton's Tenures (sections 646 and 650) and Bracton's De Legibus will locate the foundational usage.
Fourth, modern American legal materials rarely use this phrase. When it appears in a modern source, it is typically a quotation from or reference to historical authority, not independent doctrine. Treat it as a citation flag pointing backward.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three sources agree on the core meaning: suspended, not vested in any living person, held in the custody or contemplation of law. The agreement is unsurprising given the phrase's literary fixity — it traveled from Bracton and Littleton into early modern digests and was carried forward largely unchanged.
Burrill's entry is the most substantive, extending the phrase to cover things in civil law that belonged to no private person — sacred objects, religious property, and abandoned goods — on the theory that the law held them in a kind of constructive custody. This dimension is absent from both editions of Black's, which focus narrowly on abeyance of inheritance. Researchers using Black's alone will miss the civil law and admiralty contexts that Burrill preserves.
Both Black's editions reproduce essentially the same entry; the second edition adds no new analytical content. The Taylor Glossary citation in both Black's editions (Tayl. Gloss.) is to John Taylor's Elements of the Civil Law, a secondary source that itself reflects the Bractonian tradition.
What no historical source addresses directly is the procedural consequence: when an inheritance rests in nubibus, who may assert a claim, and how does the interest vest? These questions were answered by surrounding doctrine — the law of descent, the rules on abeyance in fee simple determinable estates — not by the phrase itself. The phrase identifies a condition; it does not resolve it.
Jurisdictional Note
The doctrine of abeyance, and with it the phrase in nubibus, applies most robustly in jurisdictions that preserved traditional common law freehold categories. American property law has largely displaced or codified these doctrines, and in nubibus appears rarely in modern American cases. English and Commonwealth sources will reflect the phrase's historical usage more consistently.