plevin
Plevin is a historical legal term used in English common law to describe an action by which a plaintiff could recover goods or chattels that had been wrongfully taken or held by another person, often in disputes involving property rights after death or marital arrangements. The action was specially designed for circumstances where ordinary ownership claims were insufficient, allowing the plaintiff to bypass certain procedural limitations that protected the holder’s interests.
The word originates from the Middle English “pleven,” itself derived from the Old French “pelevin,” meaning “to
In practice, plevin was frequently employed in cases involving widows, where a husband might claim his deceased
By the seventeenth century, plevin fell out of favor as newer procedural tools for property recovery were