Definition
A procedural device by which a person who holds property claimed by two or more adverse parties — but claims no personal interest in that property — asks the court to require those rival claimants to litigate their respective titles against each other, thereby relieving the holder of responsibility for determining which claimant is entitled to the property. The interpleading party, sometimes called a stakeholder, essentially steps aside from the dispute and surrenders the property or fund to the court's control.
Interplea is closely related to, and often used interchangeably with, interpleader. As a term of art, interplea refers specifically to the plea or procedural act by which the stakeholder initiates the process — the formal disclaimer of interest and demand that the rival claimants settle the matter between themselves. Interpleader refers to the broader remedy or proceeding that results.
Common Confusion
Interplea and interpleader are routinely conflated, and older sources use them almost interchangeably. The distinction, where it is maintained, is one of act versus remedy: the interplea is the pleading or motion by which a party invokes the remedy; interpleader is the equitable proceeding itself. In modern practice, interpleader has largely displaced interplea as the operative term, and interplea appears most often in historical and secondary sources rather than contemporary filings or rules. Researchers encountering interplea in older materials should treat it as functionally synonymous with interpleader unless the specific procedural act of filing the plea is the point under analysis.
Why It Matters in Research
The primary research trap is terminological drift. Interplea appears frequently in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American and English legal materials as a standalone term, but modern procedural rules — including Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 22 and its state analogues — use only interpleader. A researcher searching only for interpleader in pre-twentieth-century sources, reporters, or digests may miss relevant authorities that use interplea instead.
Black's 2nd Edition cross-references interplea to interpleader, which signals that even at the time of that edition's compilation the terms were understood as closely linked but worth distinguishing. The supplemental placement of the entry (rather than inclusion in the main alphabet) suggests the editors treated interplea as a secondary or variant form.
The Wiktionary definition captures a procedural nuance worth noting: it frames interplea as an action engrafted onto an existing suit, in which the holder of the disputed property becomes a plaintiff as against the attaching claimant. This reflects the older equity practice where interpleader was not always a freestanding action but was grafted onto pending litigation — a procedural posture that differs from modern statutory interpleader, where the stakeholder typically initiates a new proceeding.
Jurisdictional variation in terminology matters here. Some state courts and older treatises distinguish between strict interpleader (where the stakeholder has no independent liability to either claimant) and bills in the nature of interpleader (where the stakeholder has some independent exposure). The interplea, as described in Black's, maps most naturally onto strict interpleader. Researchers working in equity jurisdiction or pre-merger state practice should be alert to which form is at issue.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed., Supplemental) defines interplea as a plea by which a person sued in respect to property disclaims any interest in it and demands that rival claimants litigate their titles between themselves, relieving the holder from responsibility. The entry cites Bennett v. Wolverton, 24 Kan. 250, and cross-references interpleader.
The definition is serviceable but compact. It captures the essential structure — disclaimer of personal interest, rival claimants, demand for third-party litigation — without addressing the procedural mechanics of how the plea operates within a pending action or the distinctions between law and equity practice. The cross-reference to interpleader implicitly acknowledges that the fuller treatment belongs under that heading.
What historical dictionaries do not adequately address is the procedural evolution from the equitable bill of interpleader to modern statutory and rule-based interpleader. The historical definition reflects equity court practice; it does not anticipate the merger of law and equity or the procedural consolidation that followed. Researchers relying solely on historical dictionary entries for this term risk missing the extent to which modern procedure has absorbed and transformed the remedy.
Jurisdictional Note
Interplea as a distinct term of art has largely disappeared from modern American procedural practice, superseded by interpleader under FRCP 22 and equivalent state rules. It persists in historical materials from jurisdictions that maintained separate equity courts into the twentieth century, and may still appear in older state court decisions in Kansas, New York, and other states with rich equity traditions.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See: Interpleader