Definition
One who makes a transfer. The transferror is the party who conveys, assigns, or otherwise passes a right, title, or interest in property — real or personal — to another party (the transferee). The term is a spelling variant of TRANSFEROR, now the dominant form in modern legal usage, and the two are used interchangeably in legal sources.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Alternative form of transferor.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not listed as a distinct entry; the term is legal in origin with no significant general-language life independent of its legal meaning.
Editorial note: No meaningful gap exists between common and legal usage here. The term is technical vocabulary that migrated into general usage only through its legal context. The spelling variation between transferror and transferor is the more practically significant distinction for researchers than any gap between legal and lay meaning.
Common Confusion
TRANSFERROR vs. TRANSFEROR: These are the same concept with different spellings. Black's Law Dictionary (both 1st and 2nd editions) uses the double-r form (transferror), while modern American legal practice has largely standardized on the single-r form (transferor). The double-r spelling is not a distinct legal term with a separate meaning — it is a historical orthographic variant. Researchers encountering transferror in older texts should not treat it as a different role or legal category from transferor in a modern instrument.
Why It Matters in Research
The primary research challenge this term presents is orthographic, not substantive. A corpus search for transferor that does not also capture transferror may miss hits in older printed sources, particularly treatises and digests compiled before single-r spelling became standard. Both spellings appear in historical American legal literature, and the double-r form is found in formal dictionary definitions well into the twentieth century.
The maxim quoted in both Black's editions — Transferuntur dominia sine titulo et traditione, per usucaptionem, scilicet, per longam continuam et pacificam possessionem (Rights of dominion are transferred without title or delivery, by usucaption, to-wit, long and continued quiet possession), citing Coke on Littleton 113 — signals that the historical dictionaries are situating this term within the broader law of property transfer and usucaption, not merely defining a transactional party. Researchers working on historical title disputes or adverse possession doctrine who encounter this term in context should attend to the full passage, not just the bare definition.
In tax and estate planning literature, the term transferor (and its variant transferror) carries additional technical weight in connection with generation-skipping transfer rules, trust provisions, and gift tax analysis. When working in those subfields, confirm which spelling convention a particular source follows before running string searches.
Historical Dictionary Support
Both Black's editions are in agreement on the core definition — one who makes a transfer — and both anchor the entry to the same Coke on Littleton citation. The 2nd edition expands slightly by providing the English translation of the Latin maxim, which is a useful editorial improvement but not a substantive doctrinal development. Neither edition distinguishes transferror from transferor as a matter of law; the difference is purely one of spelling.
What the historical dictionaries do not address is the downstream specialization the term has acquired in modern statutory contexts (tax law, commercial transactions, trusts and estates), where transferor is a defined term with specific legal consequences depending on statutory context. Researchers should not read the historical entries as comprehensive; they capture the foundational meaning only.
Jurisdictional Note
The spelling transferror is more likely to appear in older English and early American sources. Modern American statutes, the Uniform Commercial Code, and federal tax code provisions use transferor exclusively. No jurisdiction treats the two spellings as carrying distinct legal meanings.