RESERVANDO - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

RESERVANDOAuthored

The Law Mind • 821 words

Definition

A Latin term from old conveyancing practice meaning "reserving." Used as a term of art in deeds and other instruments of conveyance to effect the reservation of a rent or other benefit to the grantor out of the property conveyed. When inserted in a deed, reservando operated to carve out from the grant a continuing right — most commonly a rent — that the grantor retained even after transferring the property to the grantee. The word functioned not as a general qualifier but as a recognized operative word with specific legal effect: it limited or cut down the grant, preserving to the grantor something that would otherwise pass entirely to the grantee.

The maxim associated with this term — Reservatio non debet esse de proficuis ipsis, quia ea conceduntur, sed de reditu novo extra proficua (a reservation ought not to be of the profits themselves, because they are granted, but of a new rent apart from the profits) — captures the essential boundary of what reservando could accomplish. A reservation could not purport to take back the very profits or substance of what was granted; it had to operate as a newly created right, such as a rent service, issuing out of the land rather than being identical with the land or its produce.

Common Confusion

Reservando (reservation) and exceptis or salvo (exception) are frequently conflated when reading historical deeds. The distinction is substantive: an exception removes a portion of the thing granted before the grant takes effect — the excepted thing never passes to the grantee. A reservation, by contrast, creates a new right in favor of the grantor out of what is otherwise fully granted. In modern research, misidentifying which device was used can affect whether a grantor's successor holds a possessory interest or merely a rent charge, and whether the right was extinguishable as a servitude or persistent as a property interest in the land itself.

Why It Matters in Research

Reservando is exclusively a term of historical conveyancing. Researchers encountering it will almost always be working with pre-nineteenth-century deeds, English land records, or colonial American instruments that followed English forms. The word will not appear in modern drafting; contemporary instruments use "reserving" or "subject to" in plain English.

The critical research trap is confusing the operative function of reservando with modern reservation clauses. In old conveyancing, the choice of words — reservando versus excepting (exceptis, salvo) — carried distinct legal consequences. An exception removed something from the grant entirely, as if it had never been included; a reservation created a new right running back to the grantor. Misreading reservando as an exception, or vice versa, can produce fundamentally wrong conclusions about what rights were conveyed in a historical instrument.

Researchers working in chain-of-title problems, historical rent charges, or early American land grants should note that English conveyancing practice treated these operative words with considerable precision. The Coke references in both Black's and Burrill's point directly to the foundational analysis: Co. Litt. 47a for the operative use of the word, Co. Litt. 142 for the limiting maxim on what a reservation could reach.

This term also signals the presence of rent service or rent charge obligations in the underlying instrument. When reservando appears in a deed, the downstream research question is whether that reserved rent ever ran with the land, whether it was extinguished, and whether it affected subsequent title.

Historical Dictionary Support

Black's and Burrill's are in full agreement: reservando is the Latin gerund for "reserving," used in old conveyancing as the operative word for reserving a rent. Both cite Coke on Littleton as the foundational authority, and neither claims broader modern application.

Black's adds the substantive maxim — Reservatio non debet esse de proficuis ipsis — which Burrill's omits. This is the more analytically useful entry for understanding why the word had the effect it did, not merely that it did. The maxim distinguishes reservation from a clawback of the granted thing itself, a distinction that mattered enormously in feudal land tenure where rent service was a legal relationship, not merely a contractual payment.

Neither dictionary addresses the distinction between reservando and exceptis at length, though that distinction is well-developed in Coke and in later English treatise literature. Researchers needing the full doctrinal framework should not rely on dictionary treatment alone.

Jurisdictional Note

The term is rooted in English common law conveyancing and appears in jurisdictions that received English property law forms — England, Wales, and the American colonies and states following English land practice. Its precise legal effect was governed by common law doctrine rather than statute. Researchers working in civil law or mixed jurisdictions (Louisiana, Quebec, Puerto Rico) will not encounter reservando as an operative term in historical instruments from those traditions.

RESERVANDOmain

Black's Law Dictionary • 1891

Reserving. In old conveyancing. An apt word of reserving a Co. Litt. 47a. rent. Reservatio non debet esse de proficuis ipsis, quia ea conceduntur, sed de reditu novo extra proficua. A reservation ought not to be of the profits themselves, because they are granted, but from the new rent, apart from the profits. Co. Litt. 142. grant, and cuts down and lessens the grant from what it would be except for the reservation. 44 Vt. 416. A "reservation" should be carefully distin- guished from an "exception," the difference be tween the two being this: By an exception, the grantor withdraws from the effect of the grant some part of the thing itself which is in esse, and included under the terms of the grant, as one acre from a certain field, a shop or mill standing within the limits of the granted premises, and the like; whereas, a reservation, though made to the gran- thing arising out of the thing granted not then in tor, lessor, or the one creating the estate, is some- esse, or some new thing created or reserved, issu- ing or coming out of the thing granted, and not a part of the thing itself, nor of anything issuing out of another thing. 3 Washb. Real Prop. 645. In public land laws of the United States, a reservation is a tract of land, more or less considerable in extent, which is by public authority withdrawn from sale or settle- ment, and appropriated to specific public uses; such as parks, military posts, Indian lands, etc. In practice, the reservation of a point of law is the act of the trial court in setting it aside for future consideration, allowing the trial to proceed meanwhile as if the question had been settled one way, but subject to alteration of the judgment in case the court in banc should decide it differently.