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Dictionary of Law Terms: Compounding

Compounding Offences. Entering into an agreement not to prosecute an offender, for any consideration received or to be received, constitutes a crime, for which the offender may be indicted.

Compounding with Creditors. An agreement by which creditors take a portion of their claims in discharge of the whole.

Conditions of Sale. The terms upon which a vendor undertakes to sell to a purchaser.

Confirmation. A deed by which a voidable estate in land is made perfect. Conjugal Rights. Those rights of husband and wife which spring out of their relationship.

Consanguinity. Relationship by blood, in contradistinction to affinity, which is a relationship by marriage.

Conservator. A standing arbitrator, appointed to compose and adjust differences that may arise between parties, etc.

Consignment. Goods sent by one to another to be sold by the latter on account of the former.

Conspiracy. A combination of two or more persons to carry into effect an unlawful purpose.

Constructive Trust. A trust founded in what the law deems to be presumed, as contradistinguished from the expressed intention of its creator. Contempt. A disobedience to the rules, orders, or process of a court, which has power to punish such offence, which it does by imprisonment. Contingent Remainders. Estates which cannot become vested until the happening of some uncertain event.

Contribution. Where one surety or joint contractor has been obliged to satisfy the whole demand, he may obtain contribution from his fellow-surety or contractor. Conveyancers. Persons who devote themselves to the preparation of formal documents and assurances for the transfer of the title of property. Convict. One who has been condemned by a competent court. Coparceners. Such as have equal shares in the inheritance of their ancestors, as where a man dies leaving daughters only, they take his freehold land as coparceners; also where by custom, as gavelkind lands, where all the sons take equally.

Copyhold. A tenure founded upon immemorial custom, where its tenants hold by copy of the Roll some particular manor.

Costs. The expenses incurred in the prosecution or defence of legal proceedings, of which there are two kinds, those between party and those between attorney and client.

Count, in common-law pleadings, was formerly a section of a declaration, Covenant. An agreement under seal.

Coverture. The state of a married woman as being under the protection and influence of her husband or baron. She is called a feme-covert. Crassa Negligentia. Gross neglect.

Crim. Con., or Criminal Conversation. Adultery. A term used to denote the act of adultery in a suit brought by a husband to recover damage from one who committed the offence with his wife.

Cross-examination. The interrogation of a witness by or on behalf of the party against whom the evidence is given.

Curia Advisare Vult. When the court takes time to consider its judgment. Custom. A law, not written, established by long use, and the consent of our ancestors If it be universal, it is common law; if particular, it is then properly custom. Cypres (as near to). An equitable doctrine applied in certain cases, where the court cannot adhere strictly to the terms of an instrument, but carries it into effect cypres, or as near to the object as it can.