RETIRE

10 definitions found across Law Mind sources

RETIREAuthored
The Law Mind • 1070 words
Definition
In legal contexts, "retire" carries distinct meanings depending on subject matter: 1. Bills of exchange and negotiable instruments. To take up a negotiable instrument before or at maturity by paying or redeeming it. The legal effect differs sharply depending on who retires the instrument: an indorser who retires a bill by paying the transferee preserves all remedies against prior parties and holds the instrument with its rights intact; an acceptor who retires a bill at maturity effectively pays and discharges it, extinguishing all remedies on the instrument. 2. Jury deliberation. For a jury to withdraw from the courtroom to a private space for the purpose of deliberating and reaching a verdict. The jury is said to "retire" at the close of argument and instruction. 3. Employment and public law. To leave active service, typically upon reaching a designated age or years of service, whether voluntarily or pursuant to a mandatory retirement scheme. This sense underlies pension law, retirement plan regulation, and employment discrimination frameworks governing mandatory retirement ages. 4. Securities and financial instruments. To remove instruments from circulation by redemption or repurchase — as in retiring bonds or retiring shares of stock.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To fit a vehicle with new tires. (Note: Wiktionary's primary informal technical sense is tire replacement — unrelated to the legal term.) Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To withdraw from circulation or from the market; to take up and pay, as bonds or a note; also, to cause a person to retire, as in designating someone as no longer active in a position. Webster's 1913 actually tracks the legal-financial meaning closely, particularly the sense of withdrawing instruments from circulation. The modern colloquial sense of personal retirement from employment is shared between common and legal usage, but the negotiable instruments sense — where the legal consequences turn critically on who is doing the retiring and in what capacity — has no meaningful common-language counterpart and is the primary source of confusion in historical legal research.
Common Confusion
The word's ambiguity is not merely colloquial — it persists within legal and commercial usage. When historical sources say a bill was "retired," the legal effect is entirely different depending on whether an indorser or an acceptor performed the act. Retirement by an indorser keeps the instrument alive; retirement by an acceptor kills it. Sources from the nineteenth century do not always specify which party acted, requiring researchers to read surrounding context carefully before drawing conclusions about the survival of remedies on the instrument. The employment sense of "retire" — leaving active service — is superficially familiar but governed by a dense body of statutory and regulatory law (pension qualification rules, anti-discrimination provisions governing mandatory retirement, plan distribution requirements) that has no connection to the negotiable instruments sense. Researchers should be alert to which meaning a given source is using before cross-referencing.
Why It Matters in Research
The negotiable instruments sense is the primary legal meaning in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century sources, and it is the one most likely to mislead modern researchers. When reading older commercial law materials, trust deed instruments, or bankruptcy records, a statement that a note or bill was "retired" must be read in light of who performed the act — the answer determines whether rights survive or are extinguished. In modern research, the employment and pension law sense dominates. The corpus entries on retirement plans (tax law) and QDROs (family law) reflect this shift: the focus has moved almost entirely to tax qualification, plan administration, spousal rights on divorce, and distribution rules under ERISA and the Internal Revenue Code. Researchers crossing from the historical commercial law corpus into the modern tax or family law corpus should not assume continuity of meaning. Jury retirement is a procedural term of art that appears throughout criminal procedure and evidence materials. It is mechanically distinct from the other senses but sufficiently routine that it rarely generates confusion — the courtroom context makes the meaning clear. Researchers using the family law corpus on QDROs should be alert to the interaction between retirement account division and the tax consequences of plan distributions, which are addressed in the Tax Encyclopedia cross-references below.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary, Bouvier's Law Dictionary, and Black's 2nd Edition Supplemental are in close agreement on the negotiable instruments definition, and all three flag the term's ambiguity explicitly. Each draws the same central distinction — indorser versus acceptor — and reaches the same conclusion: retirement by an indorser preserves remedies; retirement by an acceptor extinguishes them. Bouvier cites Byles on Bills as supporting authority for this analysis, which is a genuine nineteenth-century treatise on the law of bills of exchange and a reliable source for the period. The Anderson's Dictionary passage retrieved under this entry appears to concern restitution following reversal of judgment, not "retire" in any of its senses — this is a corpus indexing artifact and should be disregarded. None of the historical dictionaries address the employment retirement sense in any substantive way, reflecting the absence in their era of the modern statutory framework governing pensions and retirement plans. Researchers should not expect historical dictionary support for questions arising under ERISA or the Internal Revenue Code.
Jurisdictional Note
The negotiable instruments sense of "retire" is substantially uniform across common law jurisdictions and is codified in uniform commercial law frameworks in the United States. The employment retirement sense varies significantly: mandatory retirement age rules, public employee pension systems, and plan qualification requirements differ between federal law, state law, and the rules governing specific categories of public employees (judges, military, law enforcement). Family law treatment of retirement accounts on divorce is state-specific in procedure but federally constrained in tax consequence.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Retirement Plans Overview — The Law Mind Tax Encyclopedia Retirement Savings Credit (Saver's Credit) — The Law Mind Tax Encyclopedia Tax Implications — QDROs and Division of Retirement Accounts — The Law Mind Family Law Encyclopedia
Related Terms
Bill of exchange | Negotiable instrument | Indorser | Acceptor | Discharge (of instrument) | Redemption | Jury deliberation | Verdict | Pension | ERISA | QDRO | Mandatory retirement | Annuity | Vesting | Distribution (retirement plan)
RETIREmain
Black's Law Dictionary • 1891
As applied to bills of exchange, this word is ambiguous. It is commonly used of an indorser who takes up a bill by handing the amount to a transferee, after
RETIREmain
Anderson's Dictionary of Law • 1890
ever he has lost in consequence of the erroneous judgment. Any such order is part of the judgment in reversal. The judgment, in form, is, not only that the judgment of the court below be reversed, but that "it is considered, that the defendant be restored to all things which he has lost on occasion of the judgment aforesaid; " and the writ of restitution which is issued in pursuance of it, and in which the sheriff is commanded to levy the money of the chattels of the plaintiff below, or to arrest his person, is strictly an execution.¹ In crimes, at common law, there was no restitution, because the indictment was in the name of the king. But by 21 Hen. VIII (1530), c. 11, on conviction of larceny, the prosecutor was to have restitution of the goods. That act was repealed by 7 and 8 Geo. IV (1827), с. 27, 29, which provides that the court may order restoration to the owner or his representative, from the thief or the receiver from him; but not so, if the thing stolen was a negotiable security, which has come into the possession of a bona fide holder, for value, without reasonable cause to suspect that the paper was stolen.2 1. To withdraw from membership: as, to retire from a firm or partnership. Whence retiring partner, q. v. 2. In its application to bills of exchange, is 1 Commonwealth v. Kimball, 7 Metc. 308 (1843). 2 Bridges v. State, 37 Ark. 226 (1881). State v. Lowenhaught, 11 Lea, 15 (1883), Freeman J.; Webb v. State, ib. 664 (1883). United States v. Bonham, 31 F. R. 808 (1887). • United States v. Mickle, 1 Cranch, C. C. 268 (1803). Forsythe, Hist. Lawyers, 353. See 3 R. I. 206; 60 Iowa, 520; 3 Chitty, Pr. 116, m. See 3 Bl. Com. 18; 63 Ala. 483; 6 Fla. 29; 9 111. 300. 84 Bl. Com. 12-13. See Woolsey, Int. Law, § 132. 3. To avail one's self of the provisions of a law; to take such action in court as will secure one's self the benefits of a particular law: as, to take the bankrupt or insolvent law. 4. To apply for and secure; to procure: as, to "take out" a license, letters of administration or letters testamentary, a policy of insurance, a writ of any kind. See GRANT, 4. An appeal from a decree of a circuit court is not "taken" until it is some way presented to the court which made the decree, so as to put an end to its jurisdiction over the cause." 5. The technical word in a precept ordering an arrest. See ARREST, 2; CAPERE. 6. The technical word charging felonious appropriation in embezzlement; in larceny the words are "take and carry away." "Take" and "steal" are not necessarily synonymous. The taking is actual when the seizing and carrying away is without pretense of an existing contract; and constructive, when, under such pretense, possession, with intent to convert, is obtained. See CARRY, 1; ЕмBEZZLEMENT; LARCENY; ROBBERY. 7. A mere attempt to seduce is not a taking within a statute against abduction: there must be some positive act to get the person away.6 But a taking for purposes of prostitution need not be by force; it may be by improper solicitations or inducements." 8. To appropriate to a public use, against the will of the owner: as, to take private property. 1 Jackson v. Brown, 5 Wend. 594 (1830). 2 Bank of United States v. Owens, 2 Pet. *538 (1829). Grim's Appeal, 89 Pa. 334 (1879). • Credit Co. v. Arkansas Central R. Co., 128 U. S. 261 (1888); R. S. § 1008. • Stone v. Stevens, 12 Conn. *229 (1837). • People v. Parshall, 6 Park. Cr. 132 (1864). People v. Marshall, 59 Cal. 388 (1881). . propThe constitutions of all of the States provide, in substance, as follows: “Nor shall be deprived of any person erty, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."1 In this connection "taken" means, broadly, - occupied, used, diminished in value, injured, damaged, destroyed. The courts of some States hold, or have held, that the inhibition extends only to cases of actual appropriation - direct, physical seizure or dispossession; the courts of other States, that cases of indirect, conse quential injury are also included. The later constitutions generally include the latter class of cases under such phrases as "property taken or damaged," damaged meaning injuriously affected.2 When a public use causes to property, no part of which is taken, an injury of such a character that, if it accrued when a portion of the property was taken, it would form an element of the damages as to the part not taken, there is such damage as entitles the owner to compensation.s Applied to the condemnation of land for railway use, "taken" means the exclusion of the owner from use and possession and the actual assumption of exclusive possession by the corporation at the termination and as the result of judicial proceedings.4 Where the tracks of a street railway, which owned an exclusive franchise for that mode of carriage, were paralleled by the tracks of a cable tram-way, the latter having obtained from owners of the soil the right to occupy the streets, the property of the former was held to be "damaged," and not "taken," within the meaning of the constitution of Nebraska.5 Under the Constitution of Illinois of 1870, in which the words used are "taken or damaged," a recovery may be had wherever private property has sustained a substantial injury from the making and use of any public improvement, whether the dainage be direct, as when caused by trespass or physical invasion, or consequential, as in diminution of market value.. U. S. Constitution, Amd. V. See 1 Bl. Com. 139. 2 Rigney v. Chicago, 102 Ill. 71, 75 (1882), cases; Mollandin v. Union Pacific R. Co., 14 F. R. 394 (1882); Gottscholk v. Chicago, &c. R. Co., 14 Neb. 559 (1883); Hollingsworth v. Parish of Tensas, 4 Woods, 280 (1883); Rochette v. Chicago, &c. R. Co., 32 Minn. 208-4 (1884), cases; Pittsburgh Junction R. Co. v. McCutcheon, 18 W. N. C. (Pa., 1886); Sharpless v. Philadelphia, 21 Pa. 166 (1853); Re Dorrance Street, 4 R. I. 245 (1856). Omaha Horse Ry. Co. v. Cable Tram-Way Co., 32 F. R. 733 (1887); McElroy v. Kansas City, 21 id. 257 (1884). • Woodruff v. Catlin, 54 Conn. 297 (1886), Pardee, J. Omaha Horse Ry. Co. v. Cable Tram-Way Co., 32 F. R. 727 (1887). • Chicago v. Taylor, 125 U. S. 161, 168 (1888), Harlan, J.,
RETIREmain
Bouvier's Law Dictionary • 1928
As applied to bills of ex- change, this word is ambiguous. It is commonly used of an indorser who takes up a bill by handing the amount toa trans- feree, after which the indorser holds the instrument with all his remedies intact. But it is sometimes used of an acceptor, by whom, when a bill is taken up or retired at maturity, it is in effect paid, and all the remedies on it extinguished; Byles, Bills, 15th ed. 93, 195, 263, 296; Dan. Neg. Inst. 12.
RETIREv.
Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913
To withdraw; to take away; -- sometimes used reflexively. He . . . retired himself, his wife, and children into a forest. Sir P. Sidney. As when the sun is present all the year, And never doth retire his golden ray. Sir J. Davies. To withdraw from circulation, or from the market; to take up and pay; as, to retire bonds; to retire a note. To cause to retire; specifically, to designate as no longer qualified for active service; to place on the retired list; as, to retire a military or naval officer.
RETIREv.
Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913
To go back or return; to draw back or away; to keep aloof; to withdraw or retreat, as from observation; to go into privacy; as, to retire to his home; to retire from the world, or from notice. To Una back he cast him to retire. Spenser. The mind contracts herself, and shrinketh in, And to herself she gladly doth retire. Sir J. Davies. To retreat from action or danger; to withdraw for safety or pleasure; as, to retire from battle. Set Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle, and retire ye from him, that he may be smitten, and die. 2 Sam. xi. 15. To withdraw from a public station, or from business; as, having made a large fortune, he retired. And from Britannia's public posts retire. Addison. To recede; to fall or bend back; as, the shore of the sea retires in bays and gulfs. To go to bed; as, he usually retires early.
RETIREn.
Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913
The act of retiring, or the state of being retired; also, a place to which one retires. [Obs.] The battle and the retire of the English succors. Bacon. [Eve] discover'd soon the place of her retire. Milton. A call sounded on a bugle, announcing to skirmishers that they are to retire, or fall back.
retireverb
Wiktionary (English) • 2026
Wiktionary contributorsCC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
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To fit (a vehicle) with new tires.
retireverb
Wiktionary (English) • 2026
Wiktionary contributorsCC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
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To stop working on a permanent basis, usually because of old age or illness. | To stop playing their sport and in competitions a sports player. | To withdraw; to take away. | To cease use or production of something. | To withdraw from circulation, or from the market; to take up and pay. | To cause to retire; specifically, to designate as no longer qualified for active service; to place on the retired list. | To voluntarily stop batting before being dismissed so that the next batsman can bat. | To make a play which results in a runner or the batter being out, either by means of a put out, fly out or strikeout. Also, when such an event ends a team's turn at bat. | To go back or return; to withdraw or retreat, especially from public view; to go into privacy. | To retreat from action or danger; to withdraw for safety or pleasure. | To recede; to fall or bend back. | To go to bed.
retirenoun
Wiktionary (English) • 2026
Wiktionary contributorsCC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
Extracted and formatted for display by Law Mind. Source link opens the current Wiktionary page and its contributor history; it is not a frozen copy of this extract.
The act of retiring, or the state of being retired. | A place to which one retires. | A call sounded on a bugle, announcing to skirmishers that they are to retire, or fall back.

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