Estate (law) Totally Explained

At common law, an estate is the totality of the legal rights, interests, entitlements and obligations attaching to property. In the context of wills and probate, it refers to the totality of the property which the deceased owned or in which some interest was held. It may also refer to an estate in land.

Equitable estate and legal estate

Legal Interests run with the property while equitable interests are good against those persons who are in good conscience bound to respect them. Legal interests being right in rem are good against all the world. Thus a Trustee is a Legal owner of Property which vests in him, while the beneficiary under the trust has only an equitable estate in the property.

Estate in land

An estate in land may be any carved out portion of the allodial or fee simple, which is the most complete ownership that one can have of property in the common law system. An estate can be an estate for years, an estate at will, a life estate (extinguishing at the death of the holder), an estate pur auter vie (a life interest for the life of another person) or a fee tail estate (to the heirs of one's body) or some more limited kind of heir (for example to heirs male of one's body). Fee simple estates may be either fee simple absolute or defeasible (for example subject to future conditions) like fee simple determinable and fee simple subject to condition subsequent; this is the complex system of future interests (q.v.) which allows concepts of trusts and estates to elide into actuarial science through the use of life contingencies.
Estate in land can also be divided into estates of inheritance and other estates that are not of inheritance. The fee simple estate and the fee tail estate are estates of inheritance; they pass to the owner's heirs by operation of law, either without restrictions (in the case of fee simple), or with restrictions (in the case of fee tail). The estate for years and the life estate are estates not of inheritance; the owner owns nothing after the term of years has passed, and can't pass on anything to his or her heirs.

Estate as all property

The term 'estate' is also used to refer to the whole of a person's property or of a particular kind of property (such as 'real estate' (meaning land and buildings) or 'personal estate' (meaning goods and chattels).
In the context of probate, it's all the property that passes under a will or the law of intestacy, which has to be administered by the executors or administrators.
Under the law of bankruptcy in the United States, the "estate" is defined by the Bankruptcy Code as all assets or property of any kind belonging to the debtor which is available for distribution to creditors. The bankruptcy estate is defined at . In some cases, the person with legal responsibility for the estate is the trustee. The law of England, though governed by British Acts of Parliament, is similar in this respect.

External results

Click here for more details on Estate Law

External Link Exchanges

Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:

<a href="http://estate__law.totallyexplained.com">Estate (law) Totally Explained</a>

Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned.