Definition
The stating part of a bill is the section of a bill in chancery in which the plaintiff sets out the facts of the case. It functions as the narrative foundation of the pleading — the portion where the complainant presents the relevant circumstances, relationships, and events that give rise to the claim, stated in plain declarative form.
The stating part is structurally distinct from two other components of the same document:
1. The charging part, which draws inferences from the stated facts and alleges the defendant's liability, misconduct, or the legal conclusions the plaintiff asks the court to draw.
2. The prayer (or prayer for relief), which specifies the remedy sought from the court.
Together, the three parts form the architecture of the traditional chancery bill. The stating part supplies the raw factual predicate; the charging part frames those facts as grounds for equitable intervention; and the prayer translates both into a request for specific relief.
Common Confusion
The stating part and the charging part of a bill are related but perform distinct functions and should not be conflated. The stating part presents facts without argument or inference — it is descriptive. The charging part is argumentative — it converts stated facts into allegations supporting the plaintiff's legal position and typically anticipates defenses or denials. In practice, older bills sometimes blurred this line, prompting courts and commentators to insist on the distinction as a matter of pleading discipline. A researcher encountering a bill that appears to combine factual narration with accusatory language should examine whether the pleader was observing or collapsing this formal division.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is almost exclusively a term of historical equity pleading. It belongs to the formal structure of the common-law chancery bill, a pleading form that predates modern notice pleading and code pleading reforms. Researchers will encounter it when working with equity cases, chancery records, or treatises from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries, and in American materials up to the adoption of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure in 1938, which merged law and equity and replaced the bill in chancery with the civil complaint.
Several navigational points for corpus researchers:
First, the tripartite structure (stating part, charging part, prayer) is a recurring organizational frame in equity pleading treatises. When a historical source critiques a bill as defective, it often locates the defect in one of these three parts specifically. Knowing which part is being discussed helps identify whether the problem is factual insufficiency, inadequate allegations, or an improper request for relief.
Second, the term appears with some variation in older sources. Rapalje & Lawrence's entry uses the phrase "states simply the facts," emphasizing that the stating part should not editorialize or argue — a discipline that distinguished well-drawn bills from poorly drawn ones. Where a bill's stating part crossed into argumentative territory, it risked objection or demurrer.
Third, researchers consulting records of equity courts — particularly in state chancery jurisdictions that survived longer than federal equity practice — should be aware that procedural reform timelines varied. Some states retained bill-in-chancery pleading structures well into the twentieth century.
Fourth, this term has no meaningful presence in modern civil procedure and will not appear in contemporary practice materials. Its value is entirely historical and interpretive.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (both the first and second editions) defines the term consistently and concisely: the stating part is that portion of a bill in chancery in which the plaintiff states the facts of the case, distinguished from the charging part and from the prayer. The two editions are in full agreement, and the definition remained stable across them.
Rapalje & Lawrence adds a useful gloss by specifying that the plaintiff "states simply the facts" — the adverb "simply" doing real work here, signaling that the stating part is not the place for legal argument, accusation, or inference. This formulation reflects the stricter equity pleading tradition in which each part of the bill had a proper function and overstepping it was a pleading fault.
None of the historical dictionary sources provide extended discussion of how the stating part interacted with demurrer practice or how courts treated deficiencies in this section. Treatises on equity pleading — particularly Mitford's Treatise on the Pleadings in Suits in the Court of Chancery (various editions) and Story's Equity Pleadings — provide fuller treatment for researchers who need more than the dictionary record supplies.
The one entry in the source material that does not correspond to this term (the passage about a debtor producing a statement of affairs at a meeting of creditors) appears to be a cross-contamination from a different headword in the source dictionary and should be disregarded as irrelevant to the meaning of stating part of a bill.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
No Law Mind Encyclopedia entry directly addresses equity pleading structure or the bill in chancery. The matched constitutional entries (Incorporation of the Bill of Rights; Ex parte Young) are not relevant to this term and are omitted.