ESTATE

From Agepedia

ESTATE, in law, signifies the title or interest which a person has in lands, tenements, hereditaments, or other effects, the word being derived from the Latin status, which means the condition or circumstance in which a person stands in regard to his property. Estate is real or personal. The phrase personal estate is applicable not only to movables, goods, money, bonds, notes, but also to some fixtures temporarily attached to lands or buildings ; and the distinction between those fixtures which are temporarily such, and those which belong to, and form a part of the house, or other real estate, is of importance, as this distinction will determine how it is to be attached on mesne process, or seized and sold, or set off' on an execution, and also how it descends on the decease of the proprietor. But personal estate also applies to some interests in lands or houses; thus a lease of them for a certain number of years, though it be more than a hundred, and so longer than any person is likely to live, is personal estate ; and yet an estate for the life of the owner, or of any other person, in these subjects, though the person, by whose life the interest is limited, may be ever so old or infirm, and likely to survive ever so short a time, is real estate, and is subject to the law regulating such estate, in regard to sales and descents. Real estate in lands is of various kinds and descriptions, according to the quantity of interest, its duration, or the time by which it is limited in respect to its commencement or termination, and the number and condition of the owners. A fee simple is the amplest estate which the law admits of. (See Fee.) AfrechoU is an estate lor the life of any person or persons, or any greater estate. An estate h" ILI! is one limited to certain heirs. (See Entail.) Only real estate and a freehold greater than for the life of one person, can be entailed ; but such an estate is of various kinds, such as tailmale, where it descends, in successive order, to the male heirs of the grantee iu direct descent ; tailfemale, where it is thus limited to the female de scendants: if it goes in successive order to his descendants without any distinctioi, it is called an estate in tailgeneral; if it is limited to certain descendants, as the children of a certain wife, it is an estate in tailspecial. An estate in remainder is one of which the owner is to come into possession after the expiration of an intermediate estate of another person, or number of persons or heirs; and so also is an estate in reversion: thus, if one grants an estate tail, this estate tail may expire, in which case the lauds will come back or revert to the grantor, and his estate, which still remains to him after he lias granted the estate tail, is therefore called a reversion. As to the. number of owners, an estate in common is a freehold belonging to more than one proprietor, in undivided shares; and so also is an estate in joinitenanci); but there is this distinction between these two kinds of ESTATEs, that when one jointtenant dies, his share goes to the other jointtenants, which is. not the case in tenancies in common. An estate in coparcenary arises when an estate in fee simple descends, on the decease of the owner, to his daughters, sisters, aunts, or female cousins, or their representatives, being females ; and they are called coparceners, or, for brevity, parceners. Real estate left to any one by will is called a devise, or an estate by devise, in distinction iiuni a bequest of personal property, which is called a legacy.