Definition
A Scots law term for appurtenances — the rights, privileges, and accessory subjects that pass with a grant of land even if not explicitly named in the conveyancing deed. Pertinents are those elements properly belonging to, or connected with, the principal subject of a grant, and which the law attaches to it as a matter of course. The term appears most characteristically in the formulaic phrase "parts and pertinents" (and in fuller form, "parts, pendicles, and pertinents"), which was standard boilerplate in Scottish deeds and charters to ensure that the conveyance carried with it everything appurtenant to the subjects being transferred.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Simply the plural of "pertinent" — things that are relevant or applicable to a matter.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Pertinent" as an adjective meaning related to the subject at hand; belonging or applicable to the matter in question.
The gap here is significant. In ordinary English, "pertinents" is an unremarkable plural adjective used as a noun, meaning relevant things. In Scots law it is a precise technical term of property law, describing accessory subjects that pass with a conveyance of land — a meaning entirely disconnected from the general sense of relevance. A researcher encountering "pertinents" in a Scottish deed should not read it as a general descriptor of relevant items; it signals a specific conveyancing formula with legal consequences for what property was transferred.
Common Confusion
Pertinents and appurtenances are functionally equivalent concepts — Scots law uses "pertinents" where English law uses "appurtenances." The terms are not interchangeable across jurisdictions, and sources treating them as synonyms are doing so in the sense of equivalent function, not identical legal doctrine. A researcher working in English real property law should be cautious about importing Scots case law or commentary on pertinents without accounting for doctrinal differences in how accessory rights are defined and limited in each system.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers will encounter "pertinents" almost exclusively in two contexts: Scottish historical deeds and charters, and treatises on Scots property law. The term functions as a term of art embedded in conveyancing formulae, so its significance is often structural — its presence in a deed signals that the grantor intended to convey the full complement of accessory rights attached to the subjects. Understanding that "parts and pertinents" is boilerplate language, not a substantive enumeration of specific rights, is essential for correctly interpreting what a historical deed conveyed.
The Burrill entry is the most useful of the historical sources for researchers: it preserves the Latin form ("cum omnibus partibus, pendiculis, aliisque pertinentiis") alongside the Scots vernacular formula, which helps when working with Latin deeds or mixed-language charters. Researchers working in pre-Union Scottish records may encounter the Latin version exclusively.
One navigational trap: English-language legal dictionaries, including both editions of Black's, treat this term briefly and primarily as a cross-reference to appurtenances. A researcher who follows that cross-reference into English appurtenances doctrine may be led away from the specifically Scots legal framework. For deeper engagement with how pertinents operated in practice, the Scots institutional writers — Forbes, Erskine, and Bell — are the appropriate primary sources.
The term has no meaningful modern usage outside of historical Scots legal documents and academic Scots property law scholarship. It does not appear in modern Scottish conveyancing practice in the same formulaic way, as statutory reform has altered how accessory rights are handled.
Historical Dictionary Support
All four source dictionaries agree on the core definition: pertinents in Scots law means appurtenances. They also agree that the term appears as formal boilerplate in old deeds and charters, most characteristically in the phrase "parts and pertinents."
Burrill's is the most expansive entry, preserving both the fuller variant phrase ("parts, pendicles, and pertinents") and the Latin equivalent. The citation to 36 Eng. Law & Eq. R. 20 in Burrill suggests the term appeared occasionally in cases reported in English equity reporters, likely arising from Scottish appeals or cross-border property disputes.
Bouvier's is the most compressed entry, citing only Erskine's Institutes — a reasonable primary source, as Erskine remains the standard Scots institutional writer on property law. Both editions of Black's cite Forbes' Institutes for the proposition that these are formal words in old deeds, and that citation is consistent across sources.
None of the historical dictionaries address the substantive question of what rights were actually comprehended within "pertinents" in Scots doctrine — that is, which accessory subjects passed by operation of the formula and which required express grant. For that question, Erskine's Institutes and Bell's Dictionary of the Law of Scotland are the appropriate tools, and the historical legal dictionaries here function only as pointers.
Jurisdictional Note
Pertinents is a term of Scots law with no direct counterpart in English or American legal usage. The functionally analogous concept in English and American property law is appurtenances. Researchers working in Scottish legal history should treat the two terms as parallel but not identical, and should not assume that English common law doctrine on appurtenances applies to the Scots concept.