Legal Definitions - attendant term

An attendant term is a long period, usually 1,000 years, specified as the duration of a mortgage. It is created to protect the mortgagor's heirs' interest in the land by not taking back title to the land once it is paid for. Instead, the title is assigned to a trustee who holds the title in trust for the mortgagor and the mortgagor's heirs. This arrangement gives the heirs another title to the property in case the interest they inherited proves somehow defective.

For example, if a person inherits a property with a defective title, they can use the attendant term to protect their possession or recover it when lost. This protection extends generally as against all estates and incumbrances created intermediately between the raising of the term and the time of the purchase or mortgage.

Attendant terms have been largely abolished, but they were advantageous because they afforded security to purchasers and mortgagees. If a bona fide purchaser or mortgagee should happen to take a defective conveyance or mortgage, by which he acquires a mere equitable title, he may, by taking an assignment of an outstanding term to a trustee for himself, cure the defect, so far as to entitle himself to the legal estate during the term, in preference to any creditor, of whose incumbrance he had not notice, at or before the time of completing his contract for the purchase or mortgage.