§ 15.083.Residence of a Single Man

Nine words of statute, and a survival from another century: a single man's residence is where he boards.

Because the subchapter's default sends a suit to the precinct where a defendant resides, residence has to be locatable for every defendant. This supplies the answer for a man who has no household of his own.

"Boards" is the operative word, and it dates the provision precisely. Boarding houses were ordinary lodging when this rule was written, and a boarder had a settled address without owning or renting a home.

The modern equivalent needs no translation — a rented room, lodgings, wherever the person in fact lives — so the section still does useful work even though the vocabulary has aged.

The gendered and marital framing has not been updated, and it reads oddly beside a chapter that elsewhere speaks of persons and defendants. The section is best read as answering the practical question it was written for: where does someone live who has no household of their own.

It sits beside the two other provisions filling the same gap from different directions — the nonresident-or-unknown-residence rule, which lets the plaintiff sue at home, and the transient person rule, which allows any precinct where the person is found. Between them the subchapter covers the defendant whose residence is settled but unconventional, unknown, or absent altogether.