Definition
In Roman law, a prjelegatum (also rendered praelegatum) is a testamentary disposition by which a testator grants a specific benefit to one of several co-heirs in advance of — and in addition to — that heir's ordinary share of the inheritance. The prjelegatum is made to one heir before the general division of the estate, giving that heir a preferential legacy drawn from the common fund prior to the calculation and distribution of equal portions among all heirs. It is the Roman law counterpart to the common law concept of advancement.
The mechanism operates as follows: one co-heir receives a designated thing or sum off the top of the estate; what remains is then divided among all co-heirs, including the recipient of the prjelegatum, according to their appointed shares. The favored heir thus takes twice — once by the prjelegatum, and again as a proportionate co-heir of the residue.
Common Confusion
Prjelegatum is closely related to but distinct from several neighboring concepts. Advancement in common law refers to an inter vivos gift by a parent to a child, charged against the child's eventual inheritance share — a transaction during the testator's lifetime, not a testamentary disposition. Prjelegatum, by contrast, operates by will, not by gift during life. Collation and hotchpot are the procedural mechanisms by which advancements are brought into the common fund for accounting purposes; prjelegatum is the underlying substantive instrument that creates the preferential entitlement, not the accounting procedure that corrects for it.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering prjelegatum will find it almost exclusively in civil law contexts, Roman law treatises, and Louisiana or other mixed-jurisdiction sources where Roman inheritance doctrine influenced domestic law. The term appears infrequently in Anglo-American case law and is largely absent from English equity sources, making Black's 2nd Edition Supplemental one of the few common reference points for the English-language definition.
The critical navigational point: prjelegatum is a term of Roman inheritance doctrine, not a term of English common law. When it surfaces in American legal sources, it is typically in comparative or historical discussions of advancement, hotchpot, or collation — doctrines that serve similar equalizing functions in common law and equity. Researchers who locate the term in a source should treat it as a signal that the author is drawing on civilian or Roman law learning, and should cross-reference the surrounding text accordingly.
The spelling itself is variable in historical sources. Latin sources use praelegatum; anglicized renderings drop the diphthong, producing prjelegatum or praelegatum depending on the typesetting conventions of the period. Researchers searching digitized sources should run both spellings.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) Supplemental is the primary English-language dictionary source for this term. Its definition is spare but accurate: a payment in advance of the whole or part of the share to which a given heir would be entitled from the inheritance, corresponding generally to advancement in English and American law. Black's points researchers to Mackeldey's Roman Law (§ 762) as the authoritative treatment — a standard 19th-century civil law reference that contextualizes the prjelegatum within Roman testamentary and succession doctrine.
No entry appears in the main body of Black's 2nd Edition, and the term is absent from most standard English legal dictionaries of the period, reflecting how narrowly it circulated in Anglo-American legal writing. This scarcity is itself informative: the concept migrated into English legal discourse primarily through scholars and jurists engaged in comparative law, not through direct doctrinal borrowing.