Definition
Ruftum is a Latin term from Roman civil law meaning "broken." In legal usage, it described a will that had been rendered void or invalidated — specifically, a will that was "broken" in the sense of being legally nullified after it had been properly made.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering ruftum in historical legal texts are almost certainly working in Roman civil law sources or in treatises that draw heavily on the civil law tradition. The term does not carry forward into modern common law vocabulary in any meaningful way. Its appearance is a signal that the surrounding text is engaging with the Roman law of testaments — a body of doctrine that influenced but was never directly adopted into English common law.
The term appears in Justinian's Institutes (Book II, Title 17, section 3), which discusses the various ways in which a will could become void or inoperative. Researchers should be aware that Roman law recognized several distinct modes of testamentary failure — a will could be void from the start (nullum), or it could be made validly and later broken (ruptum), or it could lapse through the heir's failure to accept (irritum). These categories are conceptually distinct, and conflating them misreads the source. Ruftum (a variant spelling of ruptum) belongs specifically to the second category: a will that was valid when made but subsequently invalidated.
Because this term appears only in the supplemental material of Black's 2nd edition and not as a main entry in later editions, its presence in the Law Mind corpus is sparse. A researcher who encounters it should treat it as a gateway term pointing toward the broader Roman law of wills rather than as a standalone doctrine with independent legal force.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed., Supplemental) defines ruftum simply as "broken," a term applied to a will, with citation to Justinian's Institutes (2, 17, 3). This entry is brief to the point of telegraphic — it identifies the meaning and the source but provides no doctrinal elaboration. The reference to the Institutes is the essential lead for any researcher seeking context: Title 17 of Book II deals with the invalidation of wills and sets out how a properly executed will could be rendered inoperative by subsequent events, such as the testator adopting a child (which could rupture the will by introducing a new sui heres) or making a new will that superseded the old one.
Later editions of Black's do not carry this term forward as a standalone entry, which reflects its status as a purely historical civil law term with no ongoing common law application. No other major English-language legal dictionary in the standard research corpus (Bouvier, Burrill, Tomlin) gives this term significant treatment, suggesting it was recognized as a technical Latinate borrowing useful primarily for translating Roman sources rather than as a term of art with active English legal meaning.
Jurisdictional Note
Ruftum has no jurisdictional application in modern common law systems. It is relevant only in the context of Roman law scholarship, civil law historical research, or the study of jurisdictions whose private law descends directly from the Roman tradition.