Common recovery

A common recovery was a legal proceeding in England that enabled lawyers to convert an estate held in fee tail, which restricted ownership and other rights to specified direct descendants of the original owner, into fee simple ownership that lacked such restrictions. This was accomplished through the use of a series of collusive legal procedures, some parts of which were fictional and others unenforceable.

In the case of a sale, the process involved the use of an intermediary and another confederate cooperating with the owner and buyer in a court case. The owner of the land would begin by conveying it to an intermediary for the intended buyer's use. The buyer would then go to court against the intermediary, alleging that a non-existent person had instead taken possession of the land. Another confederate would vouch for the owner's continued possession of the land and would then disappear from court. This triggered a series of legal technicalities that caused the buyer to take ownership of the land; in return, the confederate who vouched for the land would be held theoretically responsible for providing, specifically, land of equal value back to the original owner, but this was always unenforceable as a confederate was chosen who owned no land. A similar sequence of events would be used for other transactions, such as a mortgage.

It was devised and perfected by lawyers in the second half of the fifteenth century. A 1472 case, known as Taltarum's Case, increased its popularity.