Reduce

See Possession -^ Recoup.

To diminish. Reduction: abatement, diminution, or making smaller a demand. Reduce to possession. To change a mere right in action into actual custody and enjoyment. When a person takes money out of a bank, at which he has a balance, or procures the payment of a debt due, he may be said to reduce the fund to possession. The phrase is used especially with reference to a huslaw he thereupon makes them his own property to all intents and purposes, so that if he dies they go to his representatives; whereas the wife's choses in action not reduced into possession come back to her on her husband's death. Reduction. In French law, seems to be used of legacies in a sense corresponding to our " abatement of legacies. ' ' When a person gives or bequeathes more than his portion disponible (q. v.), the donee or legatee is liable to have his gift reduced in proportion. In Scotch law, reduction is a rescissory action by which deeds, services, decrees, or illegal acts by any body corporate may be rendered void. It results in rendering the deed called for, and not produced, incapable of receiving any effect until produced. • Reduction ex capite lecti. A species of challenge of a deed or disposition affecting heritage or land in Scotland, which formerly might be made by the heir, if the grantor or testator was, at the time of making the disposition, on his death-bed. This presumption of " death-bed " might be rebutted by showing that he lived sixty days afterwards, or subsequently went to kirk or market unsupported. But the doctrine of reduction ex capite lecti is now abolished by Stat. 34 & 35 Vict. ch. 81, passed in 1871. Brown. Reductlon-improbatlon. In addition to the Scotch action of reduction (see supra), there is an action of improbation, which is founded on actual forgery, and i;esult3 in rendering the deed called for, and not produced, for ever void and nuU. The junction of these two actions forms what is called the reduction-improbation, confers on the simple reduction all the efficacy of the improbation, and secures the person who uses it from all future trouble from the deed called for, if it be not produced in the action. See Bell. The action of reduction-improbation proceeds on the fictitious allegation that the deed is false and forged, or else the defendant would produce it. On this ground it was formerly necessary that the lord-advocate should concur in it. This necessity is abolished by Stat. 31 & 32 Vict. ch. 100, § 17, passed in 1868. Brown.