ATTORNMENT • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Attornment

... by a grant or deed in his lifetime, thought that it was otherwise with regard to a division by will. Their reasoning was that "the devise is quasi [370] an act of law, which shall inure without attornment, and shall make a sufficient privity, and so it may well be apportioned by this means." /1/ So it was said by Lord Ellenborough, in a case where a lessor and his heirs were entitled to terminate a lease on notice, that a devisee of the land as ...

— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.