(A) Zoning. This is an exception made for an application to a zoning ordinance, typically granted by a local authority or government. For example, an exception made to allow a home owner to create a two family home out of the existing one family home where all homes are zoned to be only one family homes. (B) pleading, evidence. A disagreement or difference between two parts of the same legal proceeding, which ought to agree together. Variances are between the writ and the declaration, and between the declaration and the evidence. 2. 1. When the variance is a matter of substance, as if the writ sounds in contract, and the other in tort, and e converso, or if the writ demands one thing or subject, and the declaration another, advantage may be taken of it, even in arrest of judgment; for it is the writ which gives authority to the court to proceed in any given suit, and, therefore, the court can have no authority to hear and determine a cause substantially different from that in the writ. But if the variance is in matter of mere form, as in time or place, when that circumstance is immaterial, advantage can only be taken of it by plea in abatement. 3. 2. A variance by disagreement in some particular point or points only between the allegation and the evidence, when upon a material point, is as fatal to the party on whom the proof lies, as a total failure of evidence. For example; the plaintiff declared in covenant for not repairing, pursuant to the covenant in a lease, and stated the covenant, as a covenant to repair when and as need should require; and issue was joined on a traverse of the deed alleged. The plaintiff at the trial produced the deed in proof, and it appeared that the covenant was to repair when and as need should require, and at farthest after notice: the latter words having been omitted in the declaration. This was held to be a variance, because the additional words were material, and qualified the effect of the contract. But a variance in mere form or in matter quite immaterial, will not be regarded.
Law Dictionary – Alternative Legal Definition
In pleading and practice. A discrepancy or disagreement between two instruments or two steps in the same cause, which ought by law to be entirely consonant. Thus, if the evidence adduced by the plaintiff does not agree with the allegations of his declaration, it is a variance; and so if the statement of the cause of action in the declaration does not coincide with that given in the writ.