Bona Vacantia - Definition - Law Dictionary Home Dictionary Definition bona-vacantia

Definition :

Bona vacantia, things found without any apparent owner which belong to the first occupant or finder, unless they be whale or sturgeon, wreck, treasure trove, waifs or estrays (see those titles), which belong to the Crown by virtue of its prerogative. So personal property held on trusts which have failed, or held in trust for a corporation which has been dissolved, belongs to the Crown as bona vacantia; see Re Higginson, (1898) 1 QB 325, and cases there cited. By the (English) Companies Act, 1929, s. 296, the property of a dissolved company including property held on trust for it shall, subject to the provisions of the Act, become bona vacantia. Before the Act was passed freehold and leasehold property reverted to the grantor. Hastings Corporation v. Letton, (1908) 1 KB 378, s. 296 is not retrospective, Re Katherine Ltd., (1932) 1 Ch 70, and (1933) 2 Ch 29. As to the rights of the Crown, the Duchy of Lancaster or the Duke of Cornwall to bona vacantia, see (English) Administration of Estates Act 1925, ss. 45 and 46, and ESCHEAT. And see Law of Property Act, 1922, Sch. 12 (11) (c) and (English) Land Registration Act, 1925, s. 80; FINDER; UNCLAIMED PROPERTY.

Term 'bona vacantia' comprises properties of two different kinds, those which come in by escheat and those over which no one has a claim. There is, however, this distinction between the two classes of property that while the State becomes the owner of the properties of a person who dies intestate as his ultimate heir, it merely takes possession of property which is abandoned, Bombay Dyeing and Manufacturing Co. Ltd. v. State of Bombay