“If our English law at any time knew an enduring patria potestas which could be likened to the Roman, that time had passed away long before the days of Bracton…. Bracton, it is true, has copied about this matter some sentences from the Institutes which he ought not to have copied; but he soon forgets them, and we easily see that they belong to an alien system. Our law knows no such thing as ‘emancipation,’ it merely knows an attainment of full age…. In old times a forisfamiliated son, that is, one whom his father had enfeoffed, was excluded from the inheritance. This is already antiquated, yet Bracton can find nothing else to serve instead of an emancipatio.” 2 Frederick Pollock & Frederic W. Maitland, The History of English Law Before the Time of Edward I 438, 438 n.3 (2d ed. 1899).
forisfamiliated
forisfamiliated (for-is-f[schwa]-mil-ee-ay-tid), adj. Hist. (Of a son) emancipated from paternal authority and in possession of a portion of family land in lieu of inheritance.
