Definition
A reddendum is a clause in a deed or lease by which the grantor or lessor reserves something to himself out of what he has otherwise conveyed. The word derives from the Latin for "rendering" or "yielding," and the clause typically opens with the words "yielding and paying" or "rendering therefor."
The reddendum serves two closely related but technically distinct functions:
1. In a lease, it is the operative clause reserving rent to the lessor — specifying the amount, the intervals of payment, and the party to whom rent is owed. It is the rent reservation clause.
2. In a deed of conveyance more broadly, it is the clause by which a grantor carves out or creates a new interest — such as a service, a rent-charge, or a symbolic reservation like a peppercorn — from property he has just granted to another.
In both uses, the reddendum operates after the granting words have conveyed the property interest. It is a reservation, not an exception: an exception removes something from the grant entirely, while a reddendum creates a new obligation running from the grantee back to the grantor.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "A clause in a deed by which some new thing is reserved out of what had been granted before; the clause by which rent is reserved in a lease."
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "A clause in a deed by which some new thing is reserved out of what had been granted before; the clause by which rent is reserved in a lease."
Editorial note: Unusually, the common-usage definitions here are lifted directly from legal sources and carry no independent lay meaning. Reddendum has no life outside legal instruments. The word is pure conveyancing terminology, included here only to confirm that Webster's and Wiktionary add nothing beyond the doctrinal definition — a researcher should rely on the legal sources entirely.
Common Confusion
REDDENDUM vs. EXCEPTION vs. RESERVATION: These three concepts are frequently conflated in older deeds and commentary. An exception withdraws a specific part of the property from the grant before it passes — the excepted portion never leaves the grantor. A reservation, in American usage, typically creates a new right (such as an easement) in favor of the grantor over property fully conveyed. A reddendum is the specific drafting clause that accomplishes the reservation of rent or a periodic render — it does not withhold property but imposes an ongoing obligation on the grantee running back to the grantor. Historical sources sometimes use reservation and reddendum interchangeably; modern courts generally do not.
REDDENDUM vs. HABENDUM: Both clauses appear in the body of a deed following the granting clause. The habendum ("to have and to hold") defines the extent and quality of the estate granted. The reddendum follows the habendum and qualifies the grant by imposing what the grantee must render in return. Confusion between them appears occasionally in older conveyancing practice when drafters compressed both functions into a single clause.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working with historical leases and deeds — particularly English or early American instruments — will encounter the reddendum as a standard structural feature of formal conveyances. Its location within the deed is diagnostic: finding the reddendum clause tells you what was reserved, to whom, and on what schedule, making it essential for reconstructing the economic terms of a tenancy or the burden on a fee.
Several research traps are worth noting. First, the clause does not always use the word "reddendum" itself — it is identified by the operative words "yielding and paying" or "rendering therefor," so searching for the Latin term alone will miss most instances in primary sources. Second, in older English practice, a reddendum could reserve not just money rent but services, produce, or symbolic renders (the famous peppercorn), all of which have implications for how the tenure was classified. Third, because the reddendum is the rent-reservation mechanism, its validity was governed by strict common-law rules: a reddendum in favor of a stranger to the deed (someone other than the grantor) was void at common law, a point that surfaces in title disputes over instruments drafted before modern deed reform statutes. Fourth, American jurisdictions absorbed English reddendum doctrine through reception statutes and early equity practice, but some states modified or displaced it by statute — researchers working in recorded deed indexes should check whether the jurisdiction's conveyancing act altered the formal requirements for rent reservation.
The connection between the reddendum and the covenant to pay rent is also research-critical: the reddendum creates the obligation in rem (attached to the land), while a separately drafted covenant to pay rent operates in personam against the covenantor. Both may appear in the same instrument, and their interaction governs what remedies — distress, ejectment, or contract action — were available to the lessor.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's (both editions) and Burrill's are closely aligned, all tracing the definition to Blackstone's Commentaries (2 Bl. Comm. 299) and presenting the reddendum as the clause that "creates or reserves some new thing" from what was previously granted. This lineage from Blackstone gives the term a stable doctrinal core across the nineteenth-century American dictionaries.
Rapalje & Lawrence adds the most practical texture, identifying the clause's operative words ("yielding and paying") and citing Elph. Conv. 236 — Elphinstone's Introduction to Conveyancing — as the authoritative practice reference. Rapalje also includes the maxim from Coke on Littleton: "Reddere, nil aliud est quam acceptum restituere" (to render is nothing more than to restore what was received), which illuminates the conceptual logic: the reddendum is the grantee's return obligation, the reciprocal of the estate granted.
The Bouvier's entry included in the source material is clearly misaligned — it discusses the Roman praetor's jurisdiction rather than the reddendum — and should be disregarded for this term. Researchers relying on Bouvier's for reddendum should treat that entry as a compilation error and cross-check against Black's or Burrill's.
No historical dictionary source addresses American statutory modifications or the effect of recording acts on reddendum clauses — a gap that researchers working outside English common-law materials must fill from primary sources.
Jurisdictional Note
English common law treated the reddendum as a term of art with formal requirements, including the rule that a rent reserved by reddendum to a stranger was void. American jurisdictions generally received this doctrine but many states, through deed reform and landlord-tenant statutes, have displaced strict common-law reddendum rules with statutory frameworks governing rent reservation. Researchers working with pre-twentieth-century American instruments should verify whether the relevant state had adopted conveyancing reform at the time of the instrument's execution.