Definition
REL is a legal abbreviation with two principal uses in legal texts and manuscripts:
1. Relative. Used in pleadings, statutes, probate documents, and family law materials to denote a person connected by blood or marriage. Also appears in Latin-influenced legal notation as an abbreviation for relativus or relatio.
2. Release. Appears in older deed records, conveyancing instruments, and court dockets as a shorthand for the formal act of relinquishing a right, claim, or interest. Context almost always determines which meaning applies.
In older English legal manuscripts and printed reports, REL may also serve as a general abbreviation flag indicating a relator — the private party on whose behalf a public officer brings suit (as in a qui tam or relator action).
Common Confusion
The abbreviation REL is ambiguous in historical sources. A researcher encountering REL in a probate inventory may be reading "relative," while the same abbreviation in a land record abstract almost certainly means "release." In court docket entries, especially from equity courts, REL points toward "relator." No universal rule governs the choice; the surrounding text must resolve it. Do not assume the same abbreviation carries the same meaning across document types or time periods within a single collection.
Why It Matters in Research
The abbreviation REL is a frequent source of misreading in document transcription and indexing. Several practical hazards arise:
First, probate and intestacy research: In estate inventories and administration files, REL appears next to names to mark persons who are relatives of the deceased — relevant to intestate distribution and kinship adoption claims. These notations connect directly to questions of who qualified as an heir, next of kin, or eligible adoptive placement under the law of the relevant jurisdiction.
Second, land records: Release deeds (sometimes docketed or abstracted as REL) are distinct instruments from quitclaim deeds and warranty deeds. A chain-of-title researcher who misreads a REL notation as "relative" rather than "release" may incorrectly map a conveyance or miss a break in title.
Third, relator actions: In equity and administrative proceedings, REL before a party's name signals the relator posture — a private individual prosecuting in the name of the state or a public officer. This affects standing analysis and the nature of the court's jurisdiction over the matter. Historical dockets do not always spell this out, and the abbreviation is the only signal.
Fourth, Latin-text sources: In civil law and early common law materials, relatio and relativus appear in substantive doctrinal discussions (e.g., the doctrine of relation, by which a legal act is deemed to take effect from an earlier date). REL in a Latin-language treatise or glossary entry may be pointing to this doctrine rather than to any of the above.
When searching the Law Mind corpus, do not rely on REL as a consistent index term. Full-text search against the spelled-out forms — release, relative, relator, relation — will return more complete and reliable results.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary does not contain a standalone entry for REL as an abbreviation. The surrounding material in Burrill's R section addresses rejoinder and related pleading terms, suggesting the dictionary's organizational context is procedural rather than abbreviation-focused. Burrill treats the substantive concepts (release, relator, relation) under their full spellings, as was standard practice for nineteenth-century legal dictionaries. Researchers should look to those full entries in Burrill and comparable period dictionaries rather than expecting abbreviation tables.
The absence of a dedicated abbreviation entry in Burrill is itself informative: abbreviation conventions in legal documents were largely scriveners' and clerks' conventions, not terms of art standardized by lexicographers. Their meaning was understood by practitioners within a document tradition but rarely codified.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Trusts, Estates & Probate Encyclopedia: Intestate Rights of Parents, Siblings, and Collateral Relatives — for the use of REL as a kinship marker in estate documents and the legal significance of relative status in intestate succession.
The Law Mind Family Law Encyclopedia: Adoption — Relative / Kinship Adoption — for the use of REL as a designation for relative placements in adoption and child welfare records.