escheat

Law

1. (in England before 1926) the reversion of property to the Crown in the absence of legal heirs

2. (in feudal times) the reversion of property to the feudal lord in the absence of legal heirs or upon outlawry of the tenant

3. the property so reverting

Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

escheat

The assumption of ownership of property by the state if no other owner can be found.

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Escheat

in civil law, the legacy of a deceased person that does not go to his heirs. An escheat may occur if up to the day of the donor’s death there are no heirs by law or will or if none of the heirs accepts the inheritance or if the heirs are deprived of the inheritance by the will. If in the absence of heirs the will does not dispose of all the property, the unwilled part of the inheritance is recognized as the escheat.

Under Soviet law, the escheat goes to the government according to the right of inheritance. The state becomes the owner of this property, based on evidence on the right to inheritance given by a notary’s office up to six months from the day of the donor’s death. The government, in the person of local financial officials, assumes responsibility for the debts of the donor to the limit of the value of the property. Property that reverts to state ownership in this way is turned over to state, cooperative, or social organizations for appropriate use.

V. A. KABATOV

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References in periodicals archive

William Berchot was personally examined by the escheator, who finds he is 'manifestly an idiot, and has been so from his birth, nor does he enjoy lucid intervals, but, as he has heard, at lunations is worse and raves with madness'.

The Lexical Prison: Impairment and Confinement in Medieval and Early Modern England

Roger Virgoe has noted that appointment to the offices of sheriff, escheator, and the commission of the peace in particular indicate that 'there was some demand from below to sit on the commission and pressure from magnates to nominate their clients to it'.

'On yestern day, in feverere, the yere passeth fully': on the dating and prosopography of mankind

Essex, 21 Richard II (1397), with Their Values, as Shown in the Escheator's Accounts," Archaeological Journal 54 (1897): 275-303 (303), abbreviations resolved; cf.

Authorship, patronage, and literary gifts: The Books Froissart Brought to England in 1395

Central government was aided by a host of clerks and facilitated by royal officials in the shires -- sheriffs, escheators, and, from the early fourteenth century, justices of the peace.

BRITAIN 1300

(59)Brief biographies of northern men who combined careers in the royal service as sheriffs, coroners, escheators and jps with membership in the Commons in the parliament of 1422 are to be found in J.S.

Common knowledge of the common law in later medieval England

Its continued dominance over local society was secured by creating a web of clientage among the middling and lesser landowners, which eventually embraced not only the crown's growing number of local officials, such as sheriffs and escheators, but the local courts and justices.

Political society and the growth of government in late medieval England