Definition
In old English law, miliatus (also rendered milliatus) was a term describing a son who had been "portioned off" — that is, assigned a share of his father's estate during the father's lifetime in satisfaction of his future inheritance. The portioning was typically made at the son's own request and with his express assent. Once miliatus, the son was considered forisfamiliated: effectively separated from the family inheritance and no longer entitled to claim a further share of the father's estate upon the father's death. The term is closely bound to the concept of forisfamiliation and should be understood primarily as a descriptor of the son's status following that transaction, rather than as a name for the transaction itself.
Common Confusion
Miliatus describes the person (the son who has been portioned off), while forisfamiliation describes the act or legal event by which that status was created. Historical sources, including Bouvier, sometimes treat the terms interchangeably or use miliatus as a shorthand for the broader concept. Researchers should not assume the presence of one term in a source implies the full technical requirements of the other have been addressed.
Why It Matters in Research
Miliatus appears almost exclusively in sources treating medieval and early English property and inheritance law. Researchers will encounter it most often in glossaries, digests, and treatises drawing on Glanvill and similar early authorities, rather than in reported cases or statutes. Its practical significance lies in identifying when a child's claim on a parental estate had been extinguished inter vivos — a point that could be dispositive in inheritance disputes, partition actions, or dower calculations.
Two research traps are worth flagging. First, because the term is Latin and archaic, it is frequently absent from indexes in English-language digests; searches under forisfamiliation or "portion" will more reliably surface relevant material. Second, the concept of irrevocable extinguishment of inheritance rights through a lifetime assignment was never uniformly adopted across English courts and virtually disappeared from practice as the common law of inheritance developed through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Sources citing miliatus after roughly that period are likely drawing on historical or civilian learning rather than describing operative doctrine.
The Bouvier entry ties miliatus to the condition of being "mancipate" — placed under another's power or control — a connection that underscores the Roman-law undercurrents running through this area of early English property law. Researchers exploring the civilian influence on early common law property doctrine may find the term useful as a signal that a source is engaging that tradition.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's is the primary shelf source that addresses miliatus directly. The entry is brief but accurate in connecting the term to forisfamiliation and to Glanvill (Book VII, Chapter 3), which is the foundational primary authority for this area of early English law. Bouvier correctly captures the consensual nature of the arrangement — the son's request and assent were required — and the substitutive character of the portion (given in lieu of, not in addition to, inheritance rights).
What Bouvier does not address is the degree to which the doctrine was contested or inconsistently applied in medieval practice, nor does it note the distinction between a voluntary forisfamiliation and a compelled or constructive one. Later legal historians, including Pollock and Maitland in The History of English Law, provide richer context on how these arrangements functioned in practice and why they faded from the common law as primogeniture hardened as the default rule. No other standard shelf dictionary — Black's, Stroud's, Jowitt's — carries a substantive entry for miliatus; researchers relying solely on those sources will need to trace the concept through forisfamiliation.
Jurisdictional Note
Miliatus and the doctrine of forisfamiliation were specific to early English common law and did not carry forward as operative legal concepts into American law. Researchers working in Scottish or civilian-influenced jurisdictions may find analogous concepts under different terminology, but direct translation is unreliable.