Freehold - Definition - Law Dictionary Home Dictionary Definition freehold

Definition :

Freehold, one of the two chief tenures known in ancient times by the phrase 'tenure in free socage,' and the only free lay-mode of holding property. It is derived from the feudal system, but the services connected with it were honourable and mild. The annihilation of the feudal severities has left this tenure unshackled, and by far the greater part of the real property in this country is freehold.

Such an interest in lands of frank tenement as may endure not only during the owner's life, but which is cast after his death upon the persons who successively represent him. Such persons were called heirs, and he whom they thus represented, the ancestor. When the interest extended beyond the ancestor's life, it was called a freehold of inheritance, and when it only endured for the ancestor's life, it was a freehold not of inheritance.

An estate to be a freehold must possess these two qualities: (1) immobility, that is, the property must be either land or some interest issuing out of or annexed to land; and (2) indeterminate duration; for if the utmost period of time to which an estate can endure be fixed and determined, it cannot be a freehold.

Now by the English Law of Properties Act, 1925, s. 1, 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. all other estates are equitable interests under that Act; descent of legal estates to heirs of persons dying after 1925 has been abolished: A.E. Act, 1925, s. 45. See HEIRS.