Definition
In equity pleading, pretenses are allegations inserted in a bill in chancery for the purpose of anticipating and negating a defense the defendant is expected to raise. Rather than waiting for the defendant to assert a defense in their answer, the complainant pleads preemptively in the bill itself, setting out the anticipated objection and then refuting it. The device allowed equity pleaders to foreclose predictable defenses at the outset and streamline proceedings in chancery.
The term is rarely used in modern practice in this technical sense. Its surviving legal significance is almost entirely absorbed by the phrase FALSE PRETENSES, which denotes a distinct and well-developed doctrine in criminal law.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Plural of pretense — false appearances, claims, or intentions put forward to deceive.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Pretense" is defined as a holding out or offering to others something false or feigned; a false show or claim; a simulation.
The gap is meaningful here. In ordinary English, pretenses carries a strong connotation of deception. In its equity pleading sense, however, the term is neutral — it refers to a drafting technique in which a complainant articulates anticipated defensive arguments, not to any fraud or false statement. A researcher encountering "pretenses" in a historical chancery bill should not assume the term signals fraudulent conduct; it likely signals pleading strategy.
Common Confusion
The word "pretenses" in historical legal documents may refer to either (1) the equity pleading device described above or (2) the criminal doctrine of false pretenses. These are unrelated concepts. Context usually resolves the ambiguity — a chancery bill uses the term technically and procedurally; a criminal indictment or penal statute uses it substantively. Researchers working in criminal law sources should proceed directly to FALSE PRETENSES. Researchers working in pre-modern chancery records should understand the term in its pleading sense.
Why It Matters in Research
The standalone term "pretenses" as a pleading device is a historical artifact of equity practice. It appears in chancery bills from the period when equity pleading was highly formalized — roughly the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries in England, and in American courts of equity through the mid-nineteenth century. After the merger of law and equity under the Field Code (1848) and later the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (1938), the formal structure of chancery bills — including the device of pleading pretenses — disappeared from practice.
Researchers working with pre-merger equity records should be alert to this usage. A bill that includes a section labeled or described as "pretenses" is not alleging fraud; it is deploying a recognized pleading form. Misreading this as substantive content rather than procedural strategy can distort analysis of the underlying dispute.
The far larger research trail runs through FALSE PRETENSES. That doctrine — obtaining property through knowingly false representations of fact — generated extensive statutory and common law development and is where nearly all substantive legal authority on deception-based acquisition of property will be found. Cross-referencing to FALSE PRETENSES is almost always the productive next step.
Historical Dictionary Support
Both editions of Black's Law Dictionary give identical or nearly identical definitions, citing Hunt's treatise on equity (Hunt, Eq. pt. I, c. 1) as authority. Neither edition elaborates beyond this single-sentence description. The 2nd edition adds a cross-reference directing readers to FALSE PRETENSES under the entry for "False," confirming that the editors recognized the conceptual overlap but treated the two as distinct headwords.
What the historical dictionaries do not address: they offer no discussion of how pretenses functioned in practice, how they related to other structural components of the bill in chancery (such as the stating part, the charging part, or the interrogating part), or how courts treated them when challenged. Researchers needing that depth will need to consult equity pleading treatises — Story's Equity Pleading and Mitford's Treatise on Pleading in Chancery being the standard authorities — rather than dictionary definitions.
The brevity of the entry across both editions suggests the term was already receding from active use by the time Black's was compiled, consistent with the decline of formal chancery pleading in American courts.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: False Pretenses; Equity Pleading; Bills in Chancery.