Acquisition of fruits
The owner of a thing was, in general, also the owner of the fruits the thing produced, whether they were natural fruits (e.g., offspring of animals, products of fields) or civil fruits (the rent from a lease, the earnings of a slave).
He owned them on the ground that the accessory - in this case, the fruits themselves - followed the principal (see Julianus, D. 22.1.25pr). In some cases, however, a person other than the owner had the rights to the fruits. For instance, the possessor in good faith, the long-term lessee (emphyteuta), the tenant of agricultural land (colonus), the usufructuary, or the ordinary tenant with permission of the owner were entitled to fruits. Because they were possessors, the possessor in good faith and the emphyteuta owned the fruits from the moment the latter were separated from the principal, fruit-bearing thing. The usufructuary and the tenant, however, were not technically possessors, so they only acquired the fruits after gaining actual control of them (perceptio). Their acquisition required the acquiescence (tacit or explicit) of the owner.Traditio
Traditio was the voluntary and derivative way of transferring civil ownership of res nec mancipi and praetorian or bonitary ownership of res mancipi. This
method of acquisition was based on natural law and was recognized by the civil law and the law of nations. It was the only form of conveyance that survived in the Corpus Iuris. Traditio consisted of the simple delivery of the thing to the transferee by the owner of the thing or by a person authorized by him. But Paul was emphatic: “Bare delivery of itself never transfers ownership” (D. 41.1.31pr.). For the delivery to transfer ownership, and not only possession, it had to be based on a valid ground or cause (iusta causa), such as a prior sale. Therefore, the bare common intention of the parties to transfer property was legally insufficient.
If Titius sold his toga to Caius, the valid ground of the delivery was the fulfillment of the sale. There was consequently a transfer of ownership. Ownership would also have transferred if Titius had handed a necklace over to his friend Marca as a gift, since donation was recognized by Roman law as a valid ground for a transfer of ownership. No transfer would have occurred, however, if Titius had provided a toga to Caius while the latter was having his own repaired, or if Titius handed over a horse to Caius as security for a debt. Besides sales and donation, valid grounds for the transfer of ownership by delivery were the payment of a debt (solvere), the establishment of a dowry (dotem dare), or the making of a loan (credere) of money or fungible things (if I lent a loaf of bread I could not expect the same loaf back, but a different one of the same quality).Although traditio required physical delivery, over time the physical element of delivery was reduced to a minimum, so long as effective control really transferred: for instance, a warehouse was considered to be transferred once the transferor had delivered the keys to the transferee, even when the latter had not yet opened the warehouse (Papinian, D. 18.1.74). A piece of land was transferred when both the transferor and the transferee were actually in sight of it, and not only when they had walked around its perimeter.
The increasing irrelevance of delivery led to two special cases: the traditio brevi manu and the constitutum possessorium. Traditio brevi manu took place when the transferee already held the thing but not as owner: e.g., if Titius lent Caius a toga and later agreed to sell it to him. In such a case, the handover of the toga would be superfluous. The delivery was temporally anticipated by the valid ground for transfer itself. Constitutum possessorium was the opposite case. It occurred whenever the owner transferred ownership but continued holding the thing under a different title - as when, for instance, Titius sold Caius a toga but they agreed that Titius would retain it on loan. In that case, there would be no anticipated physical delivery but a postposed one: when the loan ended, Titius would have to hand the toga over.
More on the topic Acquisition of fruits:
- Acquisition of the ownership of fruits
- Acquisition, Maintenance and Loss of Possession
- MODES OF ACQUISITION OF CORPOREAL THINGS
- Acquisition of ownership
- Acquisition of legacies
- The acquisition of ownership in Roman law took various forms.
- APPENDIX III. FORM USED BY SLAVE IN ACQUISITION BY MANCIPATIO, ETC.
- Acquisition and Administration of the Inheritance
- The acquisition of proprietary interests was the chief concern of the law of property.
- In the previous paragraphs, frequent references emphasized the notion of possession as a key to the acquisition of the right of ownership.
- As previously noted, the Romans considered the law of succession to be part of the law of things, since succession was construed as a mode of acquisition of rights over things in a mass (per universitatem).
- Index
- Original modes of acquiring ownership
- INDEX
- The duties of the locator
- The canonical prohibition on usury in the Middle Ages