- The act of separating, or setting aside, a thing in
controversy from the possession of both the parties that contend for
it, to be delivered to the one adjudged entitled to it. It may be
voluntary or involuntary. - A prerogative process empowering certain
commissioners to take and hold a defendant's property and receive the
rents and profits thereof, until he clears himself of a contempt or
performs a decree of the court. - A kind of execution for a rent, as in the case of a
beneficed clerk, of the profits of a benefice, till he shall have
satisfied some debt established by decree; the gathering up of the
fruits of a benefice during a vacancy, for the use of the next
incumbent; the disposing of the goods, by the ordinary, of one who is
dead, whose estate no man will meddle with. - The seizure of the property of an individual for the
use of the state; particularly applied to the seizure, by a belligerent
power, of debts due from its subjects to the enemy. - The state of being separated or set aside;
separation; retirement; seclusion from society. - Disunion; disjunction.
Definition
[ n.]