Appropriation

The act of appropriating or setting apart; prescribing the destination of a thing; designating the use or application of a fund. In public law. The act by which tho legislative department of government designates a particular fund, or sets apart a specified portion of the public revenue or of the money in the public treasury, to be applied to some general object’ of governmental expenditure, (as the civil service list, ete.,) or to some individual purchase or expense. When money is appropriated (7. e., set apart) for the purpose of securing the payment of a specific debt or class of debts, or for an individual purchase or object of ex: pense, it issaid to be specitically appropriated for that purpose. A specific appropriation is an act of the legislature by which a named sum of money has been set apart in the treasury, and de voted to the payment of a particular demand.

45 Cal. 149.

Appropriation of payments. This means the application of a payment to the discharge of a particular debt. Thus, if a creditor has two distinct debts due to him from his debtor, and the latter makes a general payment on account, without specifying at the time to which debt he intends the payment to apply, it is optional for the creditor to appropriate (apply) the payment to either of the two debts he pleases. (1 Mer. 585.) Brown. In English ecclesiastical law. The perpetual annexing of a benefice to some spiritual corporation either sole or aggregate, being the patron of the living.

1 Bl. Comm, 384; 3 Steph. Comm. 70-75: 1 Crabb, Real Prop. p. 144, § 129.

Where the annexation is to the use of a lay person, it is usually called an “impropriation.”

1 Crabb, Real Prop. p, 145, § 180.