Definition
Latin. "Uncertain things" or "uncertain persons." In classical Roman law and its reception into common and civil law systems, *incerta* refers to persons or things that are insufficiently identified or designated to be legally cognizable. The concept operates at the intersection of legal capacity, testamentary validity, and contractual precision.
Two principal applications appear in historical legal sources:
1. Incerta persona — an uncertain person; one who is not particularly named or designated in a legal instrument such as a will or deed. Because law requires a definite beneficiary, grantee, or obligee, a gift or bequest to an incerta persona traditionally failed for want of a determinate recipient.
2. Incerta (things) — uncertain or indeterminate subject matter in an obligation or instrument. The maxim *incerta pro nullis habentur* — uncertain things are held for nothing — establishes that legal obligations predicated on wholly indeterminate subject matter are treated as void.
Common Confusion
*Incerta* should not be confused with *incertus*, the adjectival root from which it derives. *Incertus* describes a quality (uncertain, doubtful) and appears in broader contexts; *incerta* as used in legal discourse is a term of art denoting the legal consequence of that uncertainty — nullity or voidness of the instrument as to the uncertain element. The shift from adjective to legal category is a common source of misreading in Latin legal texts.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encounter *incerta* primarily in two contexts: Roman law sources (the Institutes of Justinian and their civilian commentary tradition) and early common law cases engaging with testamentary and conveyancing rules derived from that tradition.
The maxim *incerta pro nullis habentur* is a working rule, not merely a philosophical observation. It appears in early reports — Burrill cites Davies' Reports, a collection of Irish King's Bench decisions from the early seventeenth century — meaning the concept migrated into common law reasoning through equity and ecclesiastical courts handling testamentary matters. Researchers working on the history of charitable bequests, cy-pres doctrine, and gifts to unincorporated associations will find *incerta persona* directly relevant, because the problem of an insufficiently described beneficiary is precisely the circumstance that generated equitable intervention.
Anderson's entry cross-references *certum*, the positive counterpart to *incerta*. Reading the two entries together is essential: the legal standards for certainty of subject matter and person are defined in relation to each other. A researcher who finds *incerta* in a primary source should immediately consult *certum* (and its derivatives, *certum est quod certum reddi potest*) to understand the full doctrinal framework.
Trap for the historical researcher: *incerta* appears in both its feminine singular form (modifying *persona*) and its neuter plural form (modifying things generally). The grammatical form signals which application is intended, and misreading the Latin can lead to misidentifying the doctrinal issue being addressed.
The concept also surfaces in the history of class gifts and charitable trusts, where courts wrestled with how specifically a class of beneficiaries must be defined before a gift can take effect. Modern trust and estate law has largely codified rules around this problem, but the underlying reasoning traces back to the *incerta persona* doctrine.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill provides the substantive treatment. He correctly identifies the dual application — uncertain persons and uncertain things — and supplies both the Institutes citation (Inst. 2.20.25) and the Davies' Reports citation for the maxim. This is useful scaffolding for primary source research.
Anderson's entry is a bare cross-reference to *certum*, which is typical of Anderson's economy but unhelpful in isolation. Researchers relying solely on Anderson would not recover the doctrinal content without following the cross-reference.
Neither dictionary addresses the later equitable modifications to the strict Roman rule — particularly the cy-pres doctrine and the doctrine that a class gift does not fail merely because every member of the class cannot be identified at the time of execution. These developments, elaborated primarily through equity jurisdiction in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, softened the absolute force of *incerta pro nullis habentur* in practice. Historical dictionaries from the nineteenth century understandably reflect the Roman baseline without capturing this evolution fully.