Chattels or catals [fr. Catalla, Lat.; chatel, Fr.; chaptel, Old Fr.]. The word 'catalla' among the Normans primarily signified only beasts of husbandry or, as they are still called, cattle, but in a secondary sense the term was extended to all movables and not only to these but to whatsoever was not a fief or feud or, at a later date, in the nature of freehold or parcel of it. The distinction in the class of chattels survives in the legal meaning of the terms, 'personal chattels,' denoting movable property and 'chattels real,' which concern the realty, such as terms of years of lands or tenements, wardships, the interest of tenant by statute staple, by statute merchant, by elegit, and such like, Co. Litt., 118 b.
Chattels personal or in a more narrow and more modern sense, 'chattels' (cf. 'goods and chattels' in the writ of fieri facias) (q.v.), means movable property or effects which belong personally to the owner and for which if they are injuriously withheld from him he has, in general, no other remedy than by personal action (see TROVER), while a mixed action of ejectment (q.v.), in which the plaintiff could recover the specific property was available in the case of; chattels real.' The (English) Administration of Estates Act, 1925, s. 55 (x) provides a definition of 'personal chattels' upon an intestacy. The statutory definition excludes chattels used at the death of the intestate for business purposes, and money or securities for money.
Chattels Real are estates or interests in or arising out of lands. The difference between real estate or freeholds and chattels real consists for the most part in the fixity or non-fixity of their duration. It is the latter property, viz., uncertainty of duration, that characterizes a freehold; it is the former, certainty, that characterizes a chattel real or chattel interest in realty. Hence, every tenancy of a definite duration is a term, i.e., a period accurately ascertained, during which the estate or interest is to endure, and it is immaterial that the interests may come to an end sooner; e.g., a lease for 99 years if A. shall s long live is a chattel interest or chattel real, for it cannot under any circumstances last beyond the 99 years, although it will determine earlier by A.'s death, while a lease for the life of A. was until 1926 [(English) L.P. Act, 1925] a freehold estate. The (English) L.P. Act, 1925, has preserved as equitable interests many of the incidents of former freehold estates, but it has enacted (s. 1) that the only estates in land which are capable of subsisting or of being conveyed or created at law are an estate in fee simple absolute in possession and a term of years absolute, and by s. 149 a lease at a rent or in consideration of a fine for the life of A is to take effect as a lease for 90 years determinable after the death of A. by notice as provided by the Act. Before 1926 the most important consequence of the distinction between chattels real and freeholds which were not limited to a life or lives was that freeholds of inheritance devolved at law upon the heir or devisee, while chattels real devolved on the personal representatives of the deceased. This difference has now been abolished, firstly, by s. 1 of the (English) Administration of Estates Act, 1925 [replacing the (English) Land Transfer Act, 1897], which assimilated the devolution to personal representatives of real estate to of the (English) Administrative Estate Act, 1925, which abolished all the existing rules of descent to land belonging to persons dying after 1925 other than entailed interests, while s. 46 provides for the same rules of succession to real and personal estate without distinction in case of intestacies of persons dying after 1925. Another consequence of the difference between chattels real and freeholds is that freeholds are considered to be greater estates than leaseholds, and therefore if a term of 1,000 years and an estate for life were to vest in the same persons in the same right, the term would merge and be extinguished in the life estate unless an intervening estate operated to prevent the union of interests, but the importance of this principle has been lessened by s. 25(4) of the (English) Judicature Act, 1873, replaced by s. 185 of the (English) Law of property Act, 1925, under which there is no merger at law if there is no merger in equity (Capital & Counties Bank, Ltd. v. Rhodes, 1903 (1) Ch 653), and see MERGER.
Another difference between chattels real and freeholds personal was that chattels real could not be settled in succession but vested absolutely at birth in the first tenant-in-tail, Foley v. Burnell, 1 Bro C C 274. But now, by s. 130 of the L. P. Act, 1925, an entailed interest maybe created by way of trust in any property real r personal, subject to statutory requirements. See TAIL.
Among chattels real five species of legal or equitable estates maybe enumerated: (a) for years; (b) from year to year; (c) at will; (d) by elegit; and (e) on sufferance. See also HEIRLOOMS.