Appendix 1 Glossary of Legal Terms in Property Law

• Pages: 264-266

Absolute: not conditional or determinable (in relation to estates)

Advancement: (i) gift by parent or husband to provide for child or wife; (ii) power

of trustee to advance capital to a beneficiary

Alienation: the act of disposing of or transferring property by sale or gift

Appurtenant: attached to land by act of the parties

Assignment: a transfer, eg of a lease

Beneficial owner/beneficiary: a person entitled for his/her own benefit and

not, eg, as a trustee

Bona vacantia: goods without an owner

Cestui que trust: a beneficiary under a trust

Charge: an incumbrance securing the payment of money (similar to a mortgage)

Chattel(s): tangible personal property, goods

Chattel real: leasehold interest

Chose in action: an intangible right in personal property (eg company shares,

copyright, trade mark) enforceable by court action

Codicil: a supplementary will

Collaterals: blood relations who are neither ancestors nor descendants

Condition precedent: a condition which must be fulfilled before a grant or

disposition can take eect

Condition subsequent: a condition which may defeat a grant after it has taken

eect (a grant ‘cut short in mid-flight’)

Constructive: inferred or implied

Contingent: operative only on the occurrence of a future, uncertain event

Conveyance: a deed transferring land

Corporeal: capable of physical possession

Covenant: a promise contained in a deed

Deed: a document signed, sealed and delivered

Demise: a transfer, usually by the grant of a lease (not to be confused with ‘death’

of a person)

Determine: terminate, come to an end

Devise: a gift of land by will

Disseisin: dispossession of land

Distrain, Distress: the lawful seizure of a tenant’s chattels for arrears of rent

Dominant tenement: land to which the benefit of an easement is attached

Easement: a right over land for the benefit of neighbouring land (eg a right of

way)

Euxion of time: expiration of a lease for a fixed term through the passage

of time

Ejectment: legal action for the recovery of land

Emblements: growing crops which an outgoing tenant may take

Entail: an estate or interest descending only to the issue (ie children and grand-

children) of the grantee

Equity of redemption: the sum total of a mortgagor’s rights over mortgaged

property

APPENDIX 1

GLOSSARY OF LEGAL TERMS IN PROPERTY LAW