Estates

“ Estates less than inheritance consist of dower estates, estates curtesy, estates for the life of another, and estates for one's own life, and homestead estates. Estates less than freehold or leasehold estates consist of estates for years, from year to year, at sufferance and at will. ”

“ THE most usual and universal method of acquiring a title to real estates is that of alienation, conveyance, or purchase in it's limited sense: under which may be comprized any method wherein estates are voluntarily resigned by one man, and accepted by another; whether that be effected by sale, gift, marriage settlement, devise, or other transmission of property by the mutual consent of the parties. ”

“ Men of estate studied the public good, and gave examples of true piety, loyalty, justice, sobriety, charity; and the good of the neighborhood composed most differences. Laws were reasons, not craft; men's estates were secure: they served their generation with honor, left patrimonial estates improved to a hopeful heir, who, passing from the free school to the college, and thence to Inns of Court, acquainting himself with a competent tincture of the laws of his country, followed the example of his worthy ancestors. ”

“ The landlord, or person letting the estate, is called lessor; and the tenant, or person to whom the land is leased, is called lessee. Leases for a term longer than one year, are usually required to be sealed, and in some states, proved and recorded also, as deeds and mortgages.
§3. These limited interests in land are divided into estates for life, estates for years, estates at will, and estates by sufferance. An estate for life is an estate conveyed to a person for the term of his natural life. Life estates held by lease, however, are not common in this country. ”

“ For if the present large estates were, by the dilapidation of families, to be broken to pieces and sold, others equally great would, in the free circulation of property, speedily accumulate; and the moment any possessor arrived at a certain pitch of fortune, he would probably choose to reside in the better country—near the Parliament, or the Court. ”

“ Can an estate of many thousands of acres be developed and cultivated to its fullest extent in every corner under the guidance of one individual, who, even though he may have exceptional knowledge of farming and may use skilled agents, is nevertheless concerned with many other interests which he desires to serve? Are there any of the large estates which can be pointed to as models? ”

“ And therefore I do believe, that when, in England, we talk of three estates, the clergy, not the bishops alone, make one of them, contrary to the modern opinion, that the king is the first estate, and the bishops and the nobility the second; for the king is in no country reckoned one of the estates, but the head of all. ”

“ Estates for life being now become common, and in high estimation, it was thought proper that they should be conferred with more form and solemnity, and that by means of what the feudal law calls Investiture, of which there are two kinds. ”

“ Real estate descends to heirs; personal to executors or administrators. In ordinary language, an estate is a piece of landed property, especially one of some size. Estate duty, see Death Duties. In political history the term estate is applied to a distinct order or class in society. The term 'fourth-estate' is often used to designate the Press.
Estates of Scotland, the name given to a body of similar constitution to the English Parliament, but with important differences, the king himself, as well as his officers, being responsible to the Estates for wrongs done. ”

“ Long terms in some states have annexed to them the properties of freehold estates. In some states estates pur autre vie descend like real property; in others an estate pur autre vie is deemed freehold only during the life of the grantee ”

“ Even so abstract a term as ‘estate’ is soon debased by the vulgar mouth: estates are ploughed; men ‘shoot over’ their estates. ‘Book-land’ is a briefer term than ‘land held by book-right’; ‘folk-land’ is a briefer term than ‘land held by folk-right.’ The same piece of land may be held by book-right and by folk-right; it may be book-land and folk-land too.
And now we must turn to consider another element in the king’s alienable superiority. We must speak of jurisdiction.
§ 3. Sake and Soke. Importance of seignorial justice. ”

“ The right to the possession, or the contract for possession of land for a definite period of time is called an estate for years. Originally in England, only freemen could hold freehold estates. Freehold estates are those of inheritance and those less than inheritance. ”

“ Estates that technically belonged to a single man, and were therefore subject to the operation of the law, had practically ceased to confer any benefit on the owner, and were pledged to other purposes. ”

“ But, in general, the law looks upon this estate as equivalent to an estate for life only; and, as such, will permit this tenant to exchange his estate with a tenant for life; which exchange can only be made, as we shall see hereafter, of estates that are equal in their nature.
III. Tenant by the curtesy of England, is where a man marries a woman seised of lands or tenements in fee-simple or fee-tail; that is, of any estate of inheritance; and has by her issue, born alive, which was capable of inheriting her estate. ”

“ WE are next to discourse of such estates of freehold, as are not of inheritance, but for life only. And, of these estates for life, some are conventional, or expressly created by the act of the parties ”

“ The vast expanse, however, is in fact subdivided into an infinite number of small estates, the proprietors of which dwell in the aged boroughs through which the road occasionally passes, and the extremities of which are marked by great stones fixed on their ends, which are concealed from a passenger by the luxuriant corn in which they are enveloped. ”

“ On the other hand, the lord may not enter the land to cut his own timber or open his mines. The limitations of estates usual in respect of other lands, as found in copyhold, become subject of course to the operations of its peculiar conditions as to the relation of lord and tenant. An estate for life, or pour autre vie (i.e. for another’s life) , an estate entail, or in fee-simple, may be carved out of copyhold. ”

“ Titles to estates can be made with greater facility, and it may be presumed that it will not be necessary to make the expensive and redundant conveyances which appear to be required in the transfer of real property at home. ”

“ Take away this power, and in how many cases should we see great estates squandered by spendthrifts too young to have learnt that the position they hold is one they should keep as a trust for their posterity? ”

“ When the crowned northman consulted on the welfare of his kingdom, he assembled the estates of his realm. Now, an estate is a class of the nation invested with political rights. Then appeared the estate of the clergy, of the barons, of other classes. In the Scandinavian kingdoms to this day the estate of the peasants sends its representatives to the Diet. ”

“ This rule is explained by the conception of a freehold estate as an interest in lands held by the freeholder from some lord, the king being lord paramount. (See Estate.) The granter retains an interest in the land similar to that of the donor of an estate for life, to whom the land reverts after the life estate is ended. As there are now few freehold estates traceable to any mesne or intermediate lord, escheats, when they do occur, fall to the king as lord paramount. ”

“ So that if you give your estate by will unequally among your children, as they may have behaved more or less dutiful to you, that which has the least may take the other's part from him; or another relation may possibly hire such another mob, to take away the whole from them. We shall not at such times see property determined by judge and jury, but by force of arms; and the richest and most powerful man will be able to swallow up all the estates of his lesser neighbours. ”

“ This is known enough in England, where estates let for ever, some hundred years ago, by several ancient noble families, do not at this present pay their posterity a twentieth part of what they are now worth at an easy rate. ”

“ Whoever visits some estates there, and witnesses the good-humored indulgence of some masters and mistresses, and the affectionate loyalty of some slaves, might be tempted to dream the oft-fabled poetic legend of a patriarchal institution, and all that; but over and above the scene there broods a portentous shadow—the shadow of law. ”

“ Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters' Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all. ”

“ From a poor man, poor in Time, I was suddenly lifted up into a vast revenue; I could see no end of my possessions; I wanted some steward, or judicious bailiff, to manage my estates in Time for me. ”

“ It is easy to gain a definite notion of the furnishing of colonial houses from a contemporary and reliable source—the inventories of the estates of the colonists. ”

“ That one who wrongfully dispossessed another of his land, succeeded to the estate or interest in the land, was one of the most deeply rooted doctrines of the common law from the time when the idea of an estate in lands was first conceived. ”

“ Where, by one clause in a will, an estate for life, or an estate in fee-simple, is given by plain words, if it appear in other parts of the will, by explanatory words or by implication, that it was the intent of the testator in such devise that the issue should take the estate in succession after him, then the life estate is enlarged in the one case, and the estate in fee reduced in the other, to an estate tail. ”

“ Never by a process of logical deduction from the idea of abstract ownership could we distinguish the incidents of an estate in fee simple from those of an estate for life, or those of an estate for life from those of an estate for years. ”

“ It further provides: 'The term 'real property' as used in this compact includes lands, * * * and interests in land, * * * and any and all things and rights usually included within the said term, and includes not only fees simple and absolute, but also any and all lesser interests, such as easements, rights of way, uses, leases, licenses, and all other incorporeal hereditaments and every estate, interest or right, legal or equitable, including terms of years and liens thereon by way of judgments, mortgages, or otherwise, and also claims for damage to real estate.' N.J.S.A. 32:8-4. ”

“ Estate after estate was sold for several generations, till, at last, my father found himself the heir to a half-ruined castle on the borders of the ocean, and a few thousand acres of unproductive land in the same neighbourhood. My mother, who is now a saint in heaven, was as much so as a mortal can be when on earth ”

“ May not the term interest, contained in that enumeration, considered in its relative collocation to the terms rents and profits, be understood as equivalent with the word estate, especially when the terms rents and profits may be correctly taken to cover interest understood as mere revenue, and still more especially when we keep in view the previous purpose set forth in the deed,-that of settling on the feme, and subjecting to her disposition by deed or will, the whole of her estate, real and personal? ”

“ Among other subjects which have been dealt with by legislation in the 19th century may be mentioned land transfer, registration, mortgage, partition, excambion, fixtures, taking of land in execution, declaration of title and apportionment. Hardly a year passes in which the land law is not altered to a greater or less degree.
Real estate at the present day is either legal or equitable, a difference resting mainly upon historical grounds. ”

“ But if a man grant an estate in fee-simple, reserving to himself and his heirs a certain rent; and that, if such rent be not paid at the times limited, it shall be lawful for him and his heirs to re-enter, and avoid the estate ”

“ Such was the estate, and such the man who founded and enjoyed it sixty years ago; and many an equal estate, founded and occupied by equally valuable men, then existed, and still exist in all our older states; and if our private and public virtues are preserved, will ever exist in every state of our union. ”

“ Any body corporate, any corporation sole, any trustees for charities, and any commissioners or trustees for ecclesiastical, collegiate, or other public purposes, entitled at law or in equity, and whether subject or not to incumbrances, in the case of freehold or copyhold land, being the site of an ancient monument, in fee, and in the case of leasehold land, being the site of an ancient monument, to a lease for an unexpired term of not less than sixty years. ”

“ It is but too common with the son, who has a prospect of an estate, when once he arrives at the age of one and twenty, to think the old father too long in the way between him and it; and how much more will he be subject to it, when, by this act, he shall have liberty, before he comes to that age, to compel and force my estate from me, without asking my leave, or being liable to account with me for it, or out of his share thereof, to a moiety of the debts, portions, or other encumbrances, with which the estate might have been charged before the passing of this act! ”

“ Another kind of life estate is that which is acquired, not by the acts of the parties, as by lease, but by the operation of law. Such is the right of a husband to the real estate of his wife acquired by her before or after marriage. ”

“ Make out a deed of gift transferring the plot of land to whatever authority takes charge of the new institution, but insert a proviso that should the plot of land be used for any other purpose than that which we have in view, it reverts once more to the estate. ”