Definition
"Tate" does not function as a standalone legal term with a settled, independent meaning. The source material attributed to this entry reflects a data mismatch: the four historical dictionary entries retrieved under the heading "TATE" each describe a different legal concept — none of which is the term "tate" itself. They are, respectively, fragments concerning (1) a collector of a decedent's estate, (2) outstanding legal estate in trust and mortgage contexts, (3) a cross-reference to dower and third persons, and (4) discontinuance of an estate tail. No recognized legal term "tate" corresponds to any of these passages.
Researchers encountering this entry should treat it as a retrieval artifact rather than a substantive legal definition.
Common Confusion
Do not conflate artifacts of corpus indexing with gaps in legal doctrine. The absence of a coherent definition here reflects a retrieval problem, not an obscure or archaic legal usage. If a practitioner or researcher has encountered "tate" in a primary source, the most likely explanations are: (1) a typographical error for "state," "estate," "testate," or "intestate"; (2) a proper name (Tate is a recognized surname appearing in case law); or (3) a non-English term in a mixed-language document.
Why It Matters in Research
Historical legal dictionaries — including Black's, Rapalje & Lawrence, Burrill's, and Anderson's — were typeset and later digitized under conditions that produced indexing errors, OCR misreads, and alphabetical misattributions. A fragment beginning mid-sentence (as the Black's entry does here) is a strong indicator of a page-scan error where surrounding entries bled across the indexed boundary. The Burrill's passage describing discontinuance of an estate tail almost certainly belongs under DISCONTINUANCE or ESTATE TAIL, not under any heading resembling "tate." Similarly, the Rapalje & Lawrence passage on outstanding legal estate belongs under OUTSTANDING ESTATE or LEGAL ESTATE.
When a corpus search returns an entry like this, the correct research move is not to treat the retrieved text as defining the queried term, but to:
1. Identify the actual subject matter of the retrieved passage and search for it under its proper headword.
2. Check whether the queried term is a fragment of a longer term — for example, "estate," "intestate," or "testate" — that was truncated or mis-indexed.
3. Consult the surrounding pages of the original source rather than relying on the indexed snippet.
The most probable candidate for what a researcher seeking "tate" actually needs is TESTATE (dying with a valid will) or INTESTATE (dying without one), both of which are well-developed entries across the corpus. If the interest is in the collector described in the Black's fragment, see COLLECTOR (probate sense) or ADMINISTRATOR PENDENTE LITE.
Historical Dictionary Support
None of the four retrieved passages treats "tate" as a term of art. Burrill's fragment on estate tail discontinuance cites Blackstone's Commentaries at 2 Bl. Com. 275 and 3 Bl. Com. 171, which are genuine references to the doctrine of discontinuance — the termination of an estate tail when a tenant in tail conveys a larger estate than the law permits, driving heirs to a real action. That doctrine is substantive and well-sourced, but it belongs to DISCONTINUANCE, not to any term called "tate."
The Anderson's entry is itself a cross-reference stub ("THIRD or THIRDS. See DOWER. Third person. See STRANGER."), which confirms that the retrieved material is misaligned with the queried headword regardless of which dictionary is consulted.
Historical dictionaries are not uniformly reliable as digitized corpora. Burrill's Law Dictionary in particular, given its dense typesetting and extensive use of Latin and abbreviations, is prone to OCR fragmentation. Researchers should weight internal consistency of a passage — does it read as a complete definition? does it use the queried term? — before treating retrieved text as authoritative.