Definition
In Scots law, a verb (past participle: infeft) meaning to give seisin or possession of land; to invest a person with a feudal right to heritable property. To be infeft is to have been formally invested with ownership or possession of land through the appropriate legal ceremony or instrument. The term functions both as the act of investing (to infeft a grantee) and as a state of legal standing (a person is said to be infeft once investiture is complete).
Related noun: INFEFTMENT — the act or instrument by which investiture is accomplished. In early Scots law, infeftment encompassed both the charter (the written grant of right) and seisin (the formal delivery of possession). In later Scots law, the term narrowed to refer specifically to the instrument of sasine — the recorded document evidencing that possession had been delivered. This narrowing tracks the shift from physical ceremony to documentary registration as the operative act in Scottish conveyancing.
Common Language
Wiktionary: Past participle of infeoff.
The common English word infeoff (or enfeoff) is itself a legal term of art, leaving ordinary speakers with little intuitive purchase on infeft. The word looks archaic because it is — but it remained operative terminology in Scottish property law well into the modern era, surviving longer in Scots usage than its English equivalents did in English law. A researcher encountering infeft in a Scottish legal text should not treat it as mere historical color; it describes a precise legal status with real consequences for questions of ownership, priority, and the validity of conveyances.
Common Confusion
INFEFT vs. INFEOFF / ENFEOFF: These are cognate terms from the same feudal root, but infeft is specifically Scots. English sources use infeoff or enfeoff for the equivalent act. Researchers working across Scottish and English sources should not assume the terms map perfectly onto identical legal regimes — Scottish feudal conveyancing developed its own procedural requirements, and the act of infeftment in Scots law was governed by distinct rules regarding sasine and registration.
INFEFT (verb/past participle) vs. INFEFTMENT (noun): The verb describes the act of investing; the noun describes either the whole process (charter plus seisin, in older usage) or the instrument of sasine alone (in later usage). Sources from different periods use infeftment to mean different things — this is one of the more consequential internal evolutions in this corner of Scots legal vocabulary.
Why It Matters in Research
Structural pattern: This term follows the historical evolution pattern. Its meaning did not reverse, but it narrowed substantially over time, and the noun form (infeftment) underwent a more dramatic shift than the verb. Researchers must date their sources carefully.
The key navigational trap is the two-stage meaning of infeftment. A source from the earlier period of Scots feudal law uses infeftment to mean the full investiture process — charter plus the physical or symbolic delivery of seisin. A source from the later period (post-Registration Act developments, into the 18th and 19th centuries) uses infeftment to mean the instrument of sasine specifically — the recorded document. Treating these as equivalent will produce analytical errors when reconstructing a chain of title or assessing whether a legal requirement for investiture was satisfied.
The term also connects directly to questions of real right. In Scots property law, infeftment was the point at which a personal right (a right against the granter) was converted into a real right (a right against the world). A party who held a disposition but had not yet been infeft was in a precarious position — they had a personal claim but lacked the real right that would protect them against the granter's creditors or a subsequent disponee who completed infeftment first. This makes the question of when infeftment occurred a matter of substantive legal consequence, not merely procedural formality.
Researchers working in Scottish testamentary, succession, or creditor records will encounter infeft and infeftment repeatedly. The Register of Sasines — Scotland's historic land register — is the documentary repository where infeftment was perfected through recording. References to being infeft in corpus sources are therefore often traceable to that register.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's (1st ed.) and Burrill's are in agreement, defining infeft as the act of giving seisin or possession — to invest or enfeoff — and both cite Kames' Equity (vol. 1, p. 215) as authority. This citation anchors the definition in a recognized Scots legal text of the 18th century.
Black's (2nd ed.) adds the crucial distinction between older and later usage for infeftment: the older meaning (charter plus seisin, citing Forbes' Institutes, pt. 2, p. 110) and the later meaning (saisin or the instrument of possession alone, citing Bell). Bell's reference is to George Joseph Bell, whose Principles and Commentaries are standard authorities on Scots private law. The 2nd edition entry is therefore more historically nuanced than the 1st and is the more reliable guide to understanding the term's evolution.
What the historical dictionaries do not address: the practical significance of infeftment as the moment of real right creation. They treat infeft as a definitional matter rather than a structural one. Researchers who need the substantive legal weight of the term — why being infeft or not infeft mattered — will need to go beyond these entries to Bell or to Stair's Institutions.
Jurisdictional Note
Infeft and infeftment are terms of Scots law specifically. They do not appear in English, Irish, or American legal systems as operative terminology, though cognate feudal vocabulary (enfeoff, feoffment, seisin) appears in English common law sources. Researchers should treat infeft as a signal that the source is operating within the Scottish legal tradition.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Scottish Land Law
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Feudal Tenure
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Seisin; Sasine