Attornment
property law concept
Attornment (from French tourner, "to turn"), in English real property law, is the acknowledgment of a new lord by the tenant on the alienation of land. Under the feudal system, the relations of landlord and tenant were to a certain extent reciprocal. So it was considered unreasonable to the tenant to subject him to a new lord without his own approval, and it thus came about that alienation could not take place without the consent of the tenant. Attornment was also extended to all cases of lessees for life or for years. The necessity for attornment was abolished by the Administration of Justice Act 1705.
Background
In mortgages, an attornment clause is a clause whereby the mortgagor attorns tenant to the mortgagee, thus giving the mortgagee the right to distrain, as an additional security.
As used in modern legal transactions, the term attornment refers to an acknowledgment of the existence of the relationship of landlord and tenant. A tenant often has the duty under the tenant's lease, particularly in commercial leases, to provide an attornment upon request, and is required by a creditor or potential buyer of property from the landlord to establish the nature of existing encumbrances on and income streams flowing from a property, as an element of the due diligence process associated with the transaction. Frequently, a tenant must declare the existence of any outstanding disputes with the landlord at the time the attornment is executed and waives any dispute not declared at that time.
A request for an attornment from a tenant which is refused can be used by a landlord as a basis for establishing grounds for eviction on the grounds of insecurity that the lease will be honored, or the existence of an actual case or controversy suitable for resolution in a declaratory judgment action.
“Attornment” enters the record as property law concept. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Attornment, property and concept can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Attornment” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Attornment, property and concept provides the most credible route into that argument.
The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4818679. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1705.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Attornment” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.