Absolute Title - Law Dictionary Search Results
Home Dictionary Name: absolute title Page: 6Heirloom
Heirloom [fr. h'res, Lat., heir, and geloma, Sax., goods], personal chattels, such as charters, deeds, and evidences of title, coat armor set up in a church, or a tombstone erected there, which go to the heir, together with the inheritance. The ancient jewels of the Crown are heirlooms. Heirlooms strictly so called are now rarely met with. See Williams on personal Property; Co. Litt. 18b, 185b; 2 Bl. Com. 428.The term 'heirlooms' is often applied in practice to the case where certain chattels--for example, pictures, plate, or furniture--are directed by will or settlement to follow the limitations thereby made of some family mansion or estate. But the word is not then employed in its strict and proper sense, nor is the disposition itself beyond a certain point effectual; for the Articles will, in such case, belong absolutely to the first person who, under the limitations of the settlement, becomes entitled to the real estate for a vested estate of inheritance; see Portman v. Viscount Po...
Owner
Owner, for the purposes of the Public Health Act, 1936, s. 343, replacing s. 4 of the Public Health Act, 1875, the Factory and Workshop Act, 1901, and the London Building Acts (Amendment) Act (5 Edw. 7, c. ccix.), 'the person for the time being receiving the rack-rent of the premises in connection with which the word is used, whether on his own account or as agent or trustee, or who would so receive the same if the same were let at a rack-rent' (see that title), and Kensington Corporation v. Allen, (1926) 1 KB 576.In relation to an industrial undertaking, means the person who, or the authority which, has the ultimate control over the affairs of the undertaking, and, where the said affairs are entrusted to a manager, managing director or managing agent, such manager, managing director or managing agent shall be deemed to be the owner of the undertaking. [Industries (Development and Regulation) Act, 1951 (65 of 1951), s. 3 (f)]In relation to an undertaking, means an individual Hindu undi...
Indictment
Indictment [fr. indico, Lat., to show], a written accusation against one or more persons of a crime formerly preferred to and presented upon oath by a grand jury. Grand juries were partly abolished by the Administration of Justice (Miscellaneous Pro-visions) Act, 1933 (23 & 24 Geo. 5, c. 36). The bill of indictment is now preferred by any person before a court in which a person charged may lawfully be indicted, and the proper officer shall, if the requirements have been complied with, sign the bill and it shall thereupon become an indictment. But bills of indictment may be preferred before grand juries of the Counties of London and Middlesex by virtue of certain enactments set out in the 1st Schedule (high treason and certain other offences tribal in the King's Bench Division). Indictments were of a highly technical character until simplified by the Indictments Act, 1915, which directs that the particulars of the offence shall be 'set out in ordinary language.' See also Indictments Pro...
Equity
Equity [fr. 'quitas, Lat.] There is some confusion as to the meaning of Equity; as a scheme of jurispru-dence distinct from Law 'Equity' is an equivocal term; the difficulty lies in drawing the dividing lines between the several senses in which it is used. They may be distinguished thus:-(1) Taken broadly and philosophically, Equity means to do to all men as we would they should do unto us-by the Justinian Pandects, honeste vivere, alterum non l'dere, suum cuique tribuere. It is clear that human tribunals cannot cope with so wide a range or duties.(2) Taken in a less universal sense, Equity is used in contradistinction to strict law. This is Moral Equity, which should be the genius of every kind of human jurisprudence; since it expounds and limits the language of the positive laws, and construes them not according to their strict letter, but rather in their reasonable and benignant spirit.Aristotle, in his discussion concerning Moral Equity, Ethics Eud., b.v., c. x, calls it the correc...
Gift
Gift. The old text-writers made a gift (donatio) a distinct species of deed, and describe it as a conveyance applicable to the creation of an estate-tail; while a feoffment they strictly confine to the creation of a fee simple estate. The operative verb was 'give,' which no longer implies any covenant in law (Real Property Act, 1845 (8 & 9 Vict. c. 106), s. 4), replaced by the Law of Property Act, 1925, s. 59(2), and the deed required livery of seisin. It is obsolete. See Jac. Law Dict.A gift is now understood to mean a mere voluntary assurance or transfer of property without any consideration being given for it. Such a transaction is apt to be very jealously scrutinized in a Court of Equity, and will be set aside on proof of undue influence (see that title), or of a fiduciary relationship of the donee to the donor, see Huguenin v. Baseley, (1806-8) 14 Ves 273; W. & T. L.C.; Morley v. Loughman, (1893) 1 Ch 736 (757); Lyon v. Home, (1868) LR 6 Eq 655. In the absence of any such objectio...
Settlement
Settlement, means an agreement ending a dispute or a law suit, Black's Law Dictionary, 7th Edn., p. 1377.Settlement, suggests that, in the process of vesting, the right to possession in such lands is also vested in the State, and thereafter it is settled back with the outgoing proprietor by the operation of law, Brijnandan Singh v. Jamuna Prasad Sahu, AIR 1958 Pat 589.Settlement, the act of giving possession by legal sanction; a jointure granted to a wife; a disposition of either real or personal property or both for the benefit of one person for his life, and after his death for the benefit of another person absolutely, or with a similar ultimate devolution for the use of several persons in succession after the person first named. See last title, and SETTLEMENT ESTATE DUTY.The conveyance of property -- or of interests in property -- to provide for one or more beneficiaries, usu. members of settlor's family in a way that differs from what the beneficiaries would receive as heirs under ...
Precedent
Precedent, a decision is a precedent of its own features. Further, the enunciation of the reason or principle on which a question before a court has been decided is alone binding as a precedent, Uttaranchal Road Transport Corporation v. Mansaram Nainwal, (2000) 6 SCC 366.A precedent acquirers added authority from lapse of time, the longer a precedent has remained unquestioned, the more hard it becomes to reverse it. The courts has to adopt a construction of law, which would inevitably result in upsetting titles long founded on the contrary view, Pratap Bahadur Sahi v. Lakshmidhar Singh, AIR 1946 PC 189: 73 IA 231; Vijaya Charari v. Khubchand, AIR 1964 SC 1099.Precedent, are not an immutable dogma. Courts may evolve principles which are applicable to the facts involved in each case, Rumana Begum v. Government of Andhra Pradesh, 1992 Cr LJ 3512.Means every judgment must be based upon facts, declared by the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 to be relevant and duly proved. But when a Judge, in dec...
Merger
Merger [fr. mergo, Lat., to sink], an annihilation, by act of law, of a particular in an expectant estate consequent upon their union in the same person without an intervening estate in another person--thus accelerating into possession the expectant which swallows up the particular estate. It is the drowning of one estate in another, and differs from suspension, which is but a partial extinguishment for a time; while extinguishment, properly so termed, is the destruction of a collateral thing in the subject itself out of which it is derived. 'In order that there may be a merger, the two estates which are supposed to coalesce must be vested in the same person at the same time and in the same right' [Re Radcliffe, (1892) 1 Ch 231, per Lindley, LJ]. An estate tail, however is an exception to the rule; for a man may have in his own right both an estate tail and a reversion in fee; and the estate tail, though a less estate, will not merge in the fee, 2 Bl. Com. 177.The doctrine of merger pr...
Marriage
Marriage. Marriage as understood in Christendom is the voluntary union for life of one man and one woman, to the exclusion of all others, Hyde v. Hyde, 1866 LR 1 P&D 130. Where a marriage in a foreign country complies with these requirements it is immaterial that under the local law dissolution can be obtained by mutual consent or at the will of either party with merely formal conditions of official registration, and it constitutes a valid marriage according to English law, Nachimson v. Nachimson, 1930, P. 217. Previous to 1753 the validity of marriage was regulated by ecclesiastical law, not touched by any statutory nullity but modified by the Common law Courts, which sometimes interfered with the Ecclesiastical Courts, by prohibition, sometimes themselves decide on the validity of a marriage, presuming a marriage in fact as opposed to lawful marriage. A religious ceremony by an ordained clergyman was essential to a lawful marriage, at all events for dower and heirship; but if in an i...
Magna Carta
Magna Carta, [Latin 'great charter'] The English charter that King John granted to the barons in 1215 and Henry III and Edward I later confirmed. It is generally regarded as one of the great common-law documents and as the foundation of constitution liberties. The other three great charters of English Liberty are the Petition of Right (3 Car. (1628)), the Habeas Corpus Act (31 Car. 2 (1679)), and the Bill of Rights (1 Will. SM. (1689)). Also spelled Magna charta, Black's Law Dictionary, 7th Edn., p. 963.This Great Charter is based substantially upon the Saxon Common Law, which flourished in this kingdom until the Normaninvasion consolidated the system of feudality, still the great characteristic of the principles of real property. The barons assembled at St.Edmund's Bury, in Suffolk, in the later part of the year 1214, and there solemnly swore upon the high alter to withdraw their allegiance from the Crown, and openly rebel, unless King John confirmed by a formal charter the ancient li...
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