Champerty

1. n. The prosecution or defense of a suit, whether by furnishing money or personal services, by one who has no legitimate concern therein, in consideration of an agreement that he shall receive, in the event of success, a share of the matter in suit; maintenance with the addition of an agreement to divide the thing in suit. See Maintenance.
2. n. Partnership in power; equal share of authority.

The word meanings were obtained from OPTED(The Online Plain Text English Dictionary), which is based on “The Project Gutenberg Etext of Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary” which is in turn based on the 1913 US Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary (See Project Gutenburg), as a text file.