Definition
Riens per descent (Law French: "nothing by descent") is a common law plea available to an heir-at-law who has been sued for a debt owed by a deceased ancestor. The plea asserts that the heir received no lands by descent from that ancestor and therefore has no assets from which the debt could be satisfied. At common law, an heir's liability for an ancestor's debts was limited to the value of real property actually inherited through descent; if no such land descended, the heir owed nothing to the creditor. The plea thus operates as a complete defense, grounding the heir's non-liability in the absence of the very asset that would have made him answerable.
Common Confusion
RIENS PER DESCENT is sometimes conflated with RIENS PASSE PER LE FAIT ("nothing passed by the deed"), a separate Law French plea. The two share a similar structure — each asserts that "nothing" came to the defendant by the operative legal event — but they operate in entirely different contexts. Riens per descent responds to a creditor's claim against an heir; it is about inherited land and ancestor's debt. Riens passe per le fait responds to a claim resting on a deed, by asserting that the deed conveyed nothing, typically because of a defect in its acknowledgment or execution. Researchers encountering either phrase in older pleading records should confirm which plea is actually at issue before drawing conclusions about the underlying dispute.
Why It Matters in Research
This term belongs to the classical common law system of special pleading, which was largely displaced in American jurisdictions by code pleading reforms beginning with the New York Field Code of 1848 and in England by the Judicature Acts of 1873–1875. Researchers will therefore encounter riens per descent almost exclusively in pre-reform pleading records, English equity and common law reports, and early American state court decisions predating procedural modernization.
Several traps await the historical researcher. First, the phrase is Law French and appears in sources spelled and abbreviated inconsistently — "riens en descent," "rien per descent," and variant contractions appear across manuscript and early print sources. Second, the plea's availability depended on the common law rule that an heir's personal liability extended only to land received by descent, not to land purchased independently, not to personal property, and not to land conveyed away before suit. A creditor attempting to reach an heir who had already alienated the descended land would encounter a different procedural landscape. Third, the plea interacted directly with the common law action of debt against an heir — understanding riens per descent requires familiarity with how debt actions were structured against heirs as a class of defendant distinct from executors and administrators.
For corpus researchers working in Law Mind materials, this term connects most naturally to entries on pleading forms, the action of debt, descent and distribution, and the liability of heirs. The adjacent plea RIENS PASSE PER LE FAIT appears immediately following in Bouvier and in some digests, and the two are worth treating together when researching the Law French plea vocabulary.
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence and Bouvier agree on the essential definition: the plea is made by an heir sued for an ancestor's debt, and it asserts that no lands descended from that ancestor to the heir. Both sources are terse. Rapalje & Lawrence cites Archbold's Practice (Arch. Pr. 1013) and cross-references a section on judgment, signaling that the plea's procedural context — including what judgment follows if the plea succeeds or fails — is treated separately. Bouvier cites Chitty's Precedents in Pleading (Chitty, Prec. 433), the standard English pleading-forms treatise, and places the entry immediately before Riens passe per le fait, suggesting these Law French pleas were understood as a cluster in the pleading literature rather than as isolated terms.
Neither historical source addresses what happens when an heir receives land by descent and then alienates it before suit — a significant omission, since the creditor's remedy in that situation was more complex and involved different procedural tools. Researchers relying solely on the dictionary definitions will miss this dimension and should consult the pleading treatises cited (Archbold, Chitty) directly.
The broader context that the dictionaries assume but do not state: at common law, real property descended to the heir subject to the ancestor's specialty debts (debts under seal). The heir's liability was thus a function of the feudal and post-feudal land law, not of any general notion of inherited obligation. The plea makes no sense outside that framework, which is why it disappeared as a live procedural device once code pleading and modern probate systems replaced the common law machinery.
Jurisdictional Note
Riens per descent was a creature of English common law pleading and was received into American colonial and early state practice. It ceased to function as a live plea in most American jurisdictions following code pleading reform in the mid-to-late nineteenth century and the development of modern probate and estate administration statutes, which reallocated creditor claims against decedents' estates to a separate administrative process rather than a direct action against heirs.