Talk:Taltarum's Case

From the article:

Humphrey Smyth then conveyed part of the land to a man called John Tregoz, probably as part of a marriage settlement, and Tregoz accordingly reconveyed it back entailed on Humphrey and his wife Jane, with remainder to Humphrey's heirs.

Was this legal? What exactly is going on here?

Yes, although it was really a sort of legal work-around. Humphrey had the land under an 'entail' created when Trevistarn granted the land to William Smyth, Humphrey's father, "and his heirs". What probably happened is that when Humphrey married, he wanted to ensure that the land in question went to his wife and (beyond legal doubt) to any children they might have together in the event of his death, and the marriage settlement might have included other provisions as well, e.g. an income for Jane if Humphrey died first. In other words, things had to be changed to reflect Humphrey's changed status on marriage. This created a new 'entail' and all had to be done through a conveyance to Tregoz because at the time it was very difficult (for various historic legal reasons) to simply do exactly what you wanted with freehold land.Svejk74 (talk) 14:27, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

Humphrey's wife died childless, and he suffered a recovery of the land to another man, Thomas Talcarn (the person whose name was afterwards misspelt "Taltarum").

This sentence is unclear. If Humphrey is still alive, why does it matter that his wife died? And what is meant by ‘suffered a recovery’? What the relationship between Humphrey and Talcarn? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.139.82.82 (talk) 10:35, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

'Suffering a recovery' is the legal procedure by which entails on land were broken. After Humphrey's wife died he no longer had to be concerned about providing an income for her or about his estate passing to possible heirs of their marriage. So he went about breaking the entail to him, Jane and their heirs (as he thought) and the land was then conveyed to someone else - Talcarn, and then to Hunt. We don't know what their relationship was to Humphrey, but they could have been anyone. What brought the case to everyone's attention is that after Humphrey's death, his nephew John Smyth then claimed ownership under the original entail. This was because the relative was, at that point, the 'right heir' of the original owner William Smyth, and if the original entail had still been in operation he would have got the land. The question the judges were deliberating about was - did the 'recovery' break the earlier entail as well? Humphrey, or whoever he had paid to draw up the documents, clearly thought it had, but John Smyth's lawyers argued it had not.

Anyway, the two parties in the case (John Smyth and Henry Hunt) then started legal actions against each other. The pleadings in these cases got mixed up in the reports and the whole created an interesting legal mess, going by the name "Taltarum's Case", which lawyers would solemnly argue about for the next 400 years (whilst never reading the original case reports), until they finally got rid of the need for recoveries altogether.Svejk74 (talk) 14:27, 4 April 2016 (UTC)