1. The right to use another’s property, without the right to the produce (fructus) of the thing. • Usus was a personal servitude; it gave the holder a right in rem. Cf. USUFRUCT.
“It is essentially a fraction of a usufruct, usus without the fructus. In strictness, there was no right to any fruits but this was somewhat relaxed in practice. The usuary of a house might consume the fruits of the gardens in his household, but he might not sell them, as a usufructuary might.” W.W. Buckland, A Manual of Roman Private Law 165 (2d ed. 1953).
2. The factual possession required for usucapio.
3. Lapse of time by which a wife was brought into the husband’s family and under his marital power. See MANUS(1). Cf. COEMPTIO; CONFARREATIO.“Usus is the acquisition of [power over] a wife by possession and bears the same relation to coemptio as usucapion to a mancipation. A Roman citizen who bought some object of property and got possession of it, but not ownership, because he neglected to go through the mancipation prescribed by jus civile, might nevertheless become owner by usucapion, i.e. lapse of time; thus if the object was a movable, continuous possession for one year made him dominus. In like manner, if a man lived with a woman whom he treated as his wife, but whom he had not married by coemptio (or confarreatio), and the cohabitation lasted without interruption for a year, then at the end of that period the man acquired [power over] the woman as his wife, she passed to him in manum….” R.W. Leage, Roman Private Law 100 (C.H. Ziegler ed., 2d ed. 1930).
