Definition
A nant for is a covenant made by a vendor (seller) in a conveyance of property, by which the grantor agrees to execute any further instruments of conveyance that may lawfully be required to perfect the purchaser's title. It operates as a protective undertaking running in favor of the vendee (buyer), ensuring the vendor will cooperate in completing the transfer of good title if additional documentation becomes necessary after the initial conveyance.
The term is narrow in scope: it commits the grantor to executing supplementary conveyancing instruments but does not impose broader obligations or additional covenants on the covenantor. It is, in other words, a covenant of further assurance in its most limited form — a promise to do paperwork, not a warranty of title quality.
Common Language
The phrase "nant for" has no meaningful presence in modern ordinary English. It is not a Wiktionary entry and does not appear in Webster's 1913 as a common-use expression. It is a term of conveyancing art, encountered almost exclusively in historical legal literature and deed practice.
Common Confusion
Nant for is easily conflated with the broader covenant of further assurance. The distinction matters: a full covenant of further assurance may obligate a grantor to take affirmative steps to defend or perfect title, including executing additional instruments and potentially bearing the cost of doing so. A nant for, as described by Sugden on Vendors, is narrower — it extends only to the execution of further instruments of conveyance lawfully required, and does not attach general covenanting obligations to the grantor beyond that ministerial act. Researchers should not assume that a deed reciting a nant for carries the same weight as a complete covenant of further assurance.
Why It Matters in Research
This term will appear almost exclusively in historical conveyancing materials — English and early American deeds, vendor-and-purchaser treatises, and title practice manuals predating the late nineteenth century. Its use reflects an era when conveyances were carefully constructed clause by clause, with individual covenants named and delimited, rather than bundled under modern statutory shorthand.
Researchers working with colonial or early republic land records, or with English conveyancing precedents, should watch for the phrase as a marker of limited vendor obligation. Its presence in a deed does not signal a full warranty of title. If a researcher is evaluating what protections a vendee actually received under a historical conveyance, identifying whether the deed contained a nant for versus a broader covenant of further assurance, versus a covenant of warranty, will be critical to understanding the legal position of the parties.
The term's near-total disappearance from modern American practice means it will rarely appear in twentieth-century sources. If it surfaces in a modern context, it is almost certainly a quotation from or reference to a historical document.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary is the primary source capturing this term in the American legal dictionary tradition. Black's draws directly on Sugden's treatise on vendors (Sugd. Vend. 500), which remains the authoritative historical reference for the term's scope and limitation. Sugden makes clear that the nant for is a term of art confined to an agreement to execute further conveyancing instruments — not a vehicle for imposing additional substantive obligations.
No competing or contradictory definition emerges from the dictionary record available. The term does not appear to have generated significant doctrinal development in American case law, and its treatment in legal dictionaries follows Sugden closely without elaboration. This convergence suggests the term retained a fixed, narrow meaning throughout its period of active use and was not subject to the definitional drift that affects more contested conveyancing terms.
Researchers should note that historical dictionary sources may treat nant for as a subtype of further assurance covenants without clearly flagging the narrowing distinction Sugden draws. When a historical source uses "nant for" and "further assurance" interchangeably, that is likely imprecision rather than evidence that the terms were legally equivalent.
Jurisdictional Note
The term originates in English conveyancing practice and its American usage tracks English deed forms closely. It does not appear to have been codified in any American jurisdiction's statutory conveyancing shorthand, and modern American title and deed practice has largely absorbed or replaced it with broader statutory covenant language. Researchers working with Louisiana records or civil law jurisdictions will find the term inapplicable.