Definition
VAULT has two distinct legal meanings that operate in entirely separate areas of law:
1. Burial vault. A subterranean chamber, typically of masonry or reinforced construction, used for the permanent interment of human remains. In property and cemetery law, a vault may be a privately owned structure on burial grounds, subject to conveyance, maintenance obligations, and rights of access by family members or plot holders. Some jurisdictions treat a burial vault as a fixture permanently attached to real property; others treat the right to use or occupy a vault as a distinct property interest conveyed by deed or cemetery contract.
2. Secure storage vault. An enclosed, reinforced chamber used for the storage of money, securities, documents, or other valuables—most commonly associated with banks and financial institutions. In banking law and commercial transactions, the vault is the physical location that defines custodial responsibility, determines when constructive delivery of items occurs, and establishes the site of bailment. Safe deposit boxes are typically housed within institutional vaults, giving rise to a separate sub-layer of bailor-bailee relationships.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To build as, or cover with, a vault; to store in a vault; also a colloquial gaming term meaning to remove an item from circulation.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): An arched structure of masonry forming a ceiling or canopy; an arched subterranean room used for storage, imprisonment, or interment; also the sky or canopy of heaven.
The legal meaning of vault is narrower and more functional than the architectural sense that dominates common usage. In law, a vault is defined by its purpose—interment or secure storage—not by its structural form. A poured-concrete burial liner and a steel bank vault may share little architecturally with Webster's arched masonry chamber yet both carry full legal significance. Researchers reading historical deeds, cemetery grants, or banking regulations should not assume structural descriptions govern legal analysis.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Burial vault: The interment structure, which may itself be distinguished from a mausoleum (an above-ground structure) or a crypt (a chamber within a mausoleum or church). The distinctions matter for zoning, deed restriction, and right-of-sepulture analysis.
Bank vault / institutional vault: The secure room housing currency, negotiable instruments, and safe deposit facilities. Relevant in larceny, robbery, and burglary statutes (some of which carry enhanced penalties for offenses involving a vault), as well as in regulatory frameworks governing bank examinations.
Night depository vault: A variant recognized in banking regulations, involving an exterior slot or chute that feeds deposits into a secured interior compartment. Liability for items deposited after hours but before formal bank receipt turns on the specific vault design and the governing deposit agreement.
Why It Matters in Research
The two meanings of vault rarely appear together and their conflation is not a serious research risk—context almost always distinguishes them. The real traps are more specific:
For burial vault research: Anderson's redirects researchers to BURIAL, which is the operative entry in that dictionary. Historical deed language conveying "the family vault" or "right of vault" requires careful attention to whether the conveyance transferred a freehold interest in land, a license, or a contractual right against a cemetery corporation. These distinctions affect transferability, descendability, and remedies for interference.
For banking and commercial research: Historical statutes on burglary frequently listed "vault" alongside "safe" and "strongbox" as separate enumerated targets. Courts sometimes had to determine whether a particular structure qualified as a vault for purposes of enhanced penalties. Those decisions are highly fact-specific and jurisdiction-dependent; do not assume a ruling on a "safe" controls analysis of a "vault."
For historical legal sources generally: Burrill's entry is a trap. Burrill does not define vault in the architectural or property sense at all. His entry treats "vault" as a transliteration of the Law French vailer (to be worth, to avail), giving examples like "ne vault" (it avails not) and "vault riens" (it avails nothing). These are entirely distinct terms from the noun vault meaning a chamber. Researchers encountering Burrill's entry while looking for the property or banking meaning will find nothing useful there. The Law French usage is a dead linguistic thread with no modern legal application.
Historical Dictionary Support
Anderson's Dictionary of Law offers no independent definition of vault, directing the reader instead to BURIAL paragraph 4. This editorial choice reflects the practical reality that vault's primary legal significance in Anderson's era was sepulchral—the burial vault was a recognized property interest in real property law, particularly in England and the American states that adopted similar frameworks for cemetery holdings.
Burrill's entry is a linguistic fossil. His treatment of "vault" is devoted entirely to the Law French vailer construction, citing Littleton sections 251 and 255, Year Book 26 Hen. VIII, and Dyer 29 for formulas such as "le plee ne vault" (the plea is bad). This usage had been archaic even by Burrill's time and appears in no modern legal context. The entry is of value only to scholars working directly with medieval English pleading records. It contributes nothing to understanding vault as a physical structure.
Neither dictionary addresses the banking vault in any developed sense, reflecting the period in which institutional banking had not yet generated the dense regulatory apparatus that would make the term legally significant in commercial and criminal law.
Jurisdictional Note
Burglary and robbery statutes in several states historically enumerated vault as a distinct protected structure, sometimes triggering higher offense grades than offenses against ordinary buildings. Researchers should check whether the jurisdiction in question maintains such distinctions in its current criminal code, as statutory consolidations have rendered many of the older vault-specific provisions obsolete or absorbed them into broader safe or depository categories.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: BURIAL AND SEPULTURE RIGHTS; SAFE DEPOSIT BOXES AND BAILMENT; BURGLARY (STATUTORY ELEMENTS).