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Heirloom - Law Dictionary Search Results

Home Dictionary Name: heirloom

Heirloom

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...


Heirloom

Any furniture movable or personal chattel which by law or special custom descends to the heir along with the inheritance any piece of personal property that has been in a family for several generations...


Chattels or catals

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 gene...


Fixtures

Fixtures. Things of an accessory character which are not something which is part of the original struc-ture, Boswell v. Crucible Steel Co., (1925) 1 KB 119, annexed to houses or lands, which become, immediately on annexation, part of the realty itself, i.e., governed by the same law which applies to the land, in conformity with the maxim quicquid plantatur solo, solo cedit. The application of this legal principle, however, is not uniform, as may be thus shown:(1) Between landlord and tenant. If the chattels be not let into the soil, they are not fixtures at all, and may be removed at will, like any other species of personal property. When the chattel is connected with the free-hold, by being let into the earth, or by being cemented or otherwise united to some erection attached to the ground, the question arises-when may the tenant remove such fixtures?The general rule as to annexations made by a tenant during the continuance of his term is the following-Whenever he has affixed anything...


Hereditaments

Hereditaments, every kind of property that can be inherited; i.e., not only property which a person has by descent from his ancestors, but also that which he has by purchase, because his heir can inherit it from him. The two kinds of hereditaments are corporeal, which are tangible (in fact, they mean the same thing as land), and incorporeal, which are not tangible, and are the rights and profits annexed to, or issuing out of, land. It includes money held in trust to be laid out in land [Re Gosselin, (1906) 1 Ch 120].Any property that can be inherited; anything that passes by intestacy, Black's Law Dictionary, 7th Edn., p. 730.The enumeration of incorporeal hereditaments in Hale's Analysis (p. 48) is the following:-Rents, services, tithes, commons, and other profits in alieno solo, pensions, offices, franchises, liberties, villains, dignities. But Blackstone enumerates ten principal kinds:-Advowsons, tithes, commons, ways, offices, dignities, franchises, corodies or pensions, annuities,...


Hierloom

Hierloom. See HEIRLOOM....


Mixed subjects of property

Mixed subjects of property, such as fall within the definition of things real, but which are attended nevertheless with some of the legal qualities of things personal, as emblements, fixtures, and shares in public undertakings connected with land. Besides these, there are others which, though things personal in point of definition, are, in respect of some of their legal qualities, of the nature of things real; such are animals fer' natur', charters and deeds, Court rolls and other evidences of the title of land, together with the chests in which they are contained, ancient family pictures, ornaments, tomb-stones, costs of armour, with pennons and other ensigns, and especially heirlooms....


Petty-bag Office

Petty-bag Office, an office belonging to the Common Law jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery, for suits for and against solicitors and officers of that Court, and for process and proceedings by extents on statutes, recognizances, ad quod damnum scire facias to repel letters-patent, etc., Termes de la Ley. The term is derived from the little bag (parva baga) in which original writs relating to the business of the Crown were anciently kept.By the Great Seal Offices Abolition Act, 1884, s. 5, provision was made for the abolition of the office of Clerk of the Petty Bag, and the transfer of his duties, and in 1888, the last holder of the office dying, it ceased to exist.The Common Law jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery is now transferred to the High Court of Justice [(English) Jud. Act, 1925, s. 18(2)(b)], replacing (English) Jud. Act, 1873, s. 16).Pew [fr. puye, Dut.; appui, Fr.], an enclosed seat in a church. It is some what in the nature of an heirloom, and may descend by immemorial ...


Principal

Principal, a head, a chief; also, a capital sum of money placed out at interest; also, an heirloom, mortuary, or cross-present....


Quasi-realty

Quasi-realty, things which are fixed in contempla-tion of law to realty but movable in themselves, as heirlooms (or limbs of the inheritance), title-deeds, Court rolls, etc....


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