Definition
An archaic Law French term meaning "jointly" — that is, together with another, in a combined or undivided capacity. The term appears in early Year Book usage and is essentially a procedural or descriptive word indicating that an act, holding, or legal relationship was shared among two or more parties without severance of their respective interests.
JOINTMENT itself did not develop into a standalone doctrine. Its significance lies almost entirely in its appearance as a term of art in medieval and early modern legal records, where it signals co-ownership, co-obligation, or joint action in a legal proceeding. It should not be confused with JOINTURE, a distinct and more developed concept in property law relating to a wife's provision upon her husband's death.
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Common Confusion
JOINTMENT and JOINTURE are easily conflated in historical sources, particularly given their proximity in legal dictionaries and the related term JOINTRESS (also spelled JOINTURESS), which refers specifically to a woman holding a jointure. JOINTMENT describes the manner of holding or acting — jointly — while JOINTURE describes a specific type of property settlement. JOINTRESS derives from JOINTURE, not from JOINTMENT. Researchers encountering JOINTMENT in Year Book or early common law sources should resist importing the property-settlement connotations of JOINTURE into their reading.
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Why It Matters in Research
JOINTMENT is a navigational hazard in Law Mind corpus research for two reasons. First, it is a term of very limited independent circulation — it appears primarily as a gloss or passing descriptor in Year Book materials and early commentators, not as a doctrinal heading. Searching for JOINTMENT as a substantive legal concept will return sparse results; the underlying legal ideas will more often be found under JOINT TENANCY, JOINT AND SEVERAL LIABILITY, or JOINTURE depending on context.
Second, Law French vocabulary of this type is inconsistently transcribed across historical sources. Variant spellings, abbreviations, and translation choices mean that a researcher working in manuscript or early printed Year Books may encounter JOINTMENT or its cognates without recognizing them as equivalent terms. When working with Yearb. M. 8 Edw. III or comparable materials, awareness that JOINTMENT simply means "jointly" prevents misreading the passage as a reference to a named legal institution.
The related entry for JOINTRESS in Burrill's citation to Blackstone (2 Bl. Com. 138) and Crabb's Real Property (2 Crabb's Real Prop. 191, § 1212) is the more productive research pathway if the underlying question concerns a widow's property rights or life estate settlements. JOINTMENT as a standalone term is largely a dead end beyond its Year Book context.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the only substantive treatment found in the Law Mind shelf sources. The entry is brief: Burrill identifies JOINTMENT as Law French for "jointly," cites Yearb. M. 8 Edw. III. 20 as authority, and immediately pivots to the related entry JOINTRESS/JOINTURESS, citing Blackstone and Crabb. This compression is characteristic of Burrill's approach to archaic or vestigial terms — acknowledging their existence and pointing toward the living doctrinal relatives without elaborating the term itself.
No independent treatment of JOINTMENT as a substantive doctrine appears in the historical dictionary record. The term is not developed as a heading in Blackstone's Commentaries or Coke's Institutes beyond incidental usage. This silence is itself informative: JOINTMENT never acquired the doctrinal weight of JOINT TENANCY or JOINTURE, and historical dictionaries reflect this by treating it as a linguistic artifact rather than a legal category.
Researchers should note that Burrill's conflation of JOINTMENT and JOINTRESS in a single entry, while editorially convenient, reinforces the risk of conceptual confusion discussed above. The two terms are etymologically related but legally distinct.
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