Definition
Son done (also rendered "sur done" in some transcriptions) is a historical form of fine — a collusive conveyance of land used in medieval and early modern English real property practice — in which the deforciant (the party in possession) acknowledged in court that a prior feoffment or gift of the land had already been made by him to the plaintiff (the cognizee). The acknowledgment established the cognizee's right as springing from the cognizor's own prior gift, rather than from an independent claim or compromise. The effect was to confirm and record the transfer of title through judicial record.
A fine sur done (gift done) belongs to the broader family of fines sur cognizance de droit, and distinguishes itself from related forms by the specific mechanism of acknowledgment: the cognizor admits not merely that the cognizee holds rightfully, but that he holds as a consequence of a gift the cognizor himself previously made. This rendered the fine appropriate where a prior informal or unrecorded gift needed to be solemnized and placed on the court's permanent record.
Common Confusion
Son done is one of three principal species of fine sur cognizance de droit recognized in English practice. Researchers should distinguish it from:
— Fine sur cognizance de droit come ceo que il ad de son done: this is the full formal name of the present term, commonly abbreviated to "son done." It rests on acknowledgment of a prior gift.
— Fine sur concessit: based on a fresh grant by the cognizor, not a prior gift.
— Fine sur release: where the cognizor releases all right to the cognizee, typically used where the cognizee is already in possession.
The distinctions among these three forms matter for interpreting historical instruments. Confusing son done with a concessit, for instance, misidentifies the legal basis of the transfer and can lead to errors in tracing chains of title in historical property records.
Why It Matters in Research
Son done is almost exclusively a term of English legal history. Fines as conveyancing devices were abolished in England by the Fines and Recoveries Act 1833, which means that son done will appear in corpus materials only in pre-1833 English sources, in American colonial and early republic instruments predating the reception of English reforms, and in treatises and digests explaining historical title chains.
Researchers working in:
— Colonial American land records will encounter fines, including son done, in jurisdictions that transplanted English common law conveyancing. The form appears in early American treatises explaining inherited English practice before American states developed their own recording acts.
— Historical English title abstracts and conveyancing manuals will use the term as a technical label requiring precise identification.
— Law French and Latin legal sources present the term in its full form (sur cognizance de droit come ceo que il ad de son done), which is regularly abbreviated in secondary sources. Researchers should be prepared to encounter either the abbreviation or the full Law French phrase and recognize them as the same instrument.
A practical trap: because "fine" in this context means a conveyancing device and not a monetary penalty, corpus searches on "fine" in historical real property materials will return a large and mixed result set. Filtering for "son done," "cognizance de droit," or "cognizee/cognizor" will isolate the relevant conveyancing materials.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary and Bouvier's Law Dictionary are in complete agreement on son done, and both trace the definition to the same primary authority: Blackstone's Commentaries, Book II, Chapter 21. Bouvier supplements this with citations to Cunningham's Law Dictionary, Sheppard's Touchstone, and Comyns's Digest under "Fine," all of which confirm consistent usage across the major English reference works. There is no meaningful divergence between the two dictionaries on this term.
Neither dictionary elaborates on the procedural steps required to levy a fine sur son done or the practical distinctions between son done and the other species of fine. For that level of detail, researchers must go directly to Blackstone or Sheppard's Touchstone, which provide the most thorough historical treatment. Modern American legal dictionaries largely omit son done entirely, reflecting the term's obsolescence after the abolition of fines as a conveyancing mechanism.
Jurisdictional Note
Son done is a term of English common law with no modern counterpart in any jurisdiction. Where it appears in American legal records, it reflects early adoption of English conveyancing practice in colonial and early republic periods. No American jurisdiction retained fines as a formal conveyancing device into the modern era.