property, rights to the enjoyment of things of economic value, whether the enjoyment is exclusive or shared, present or prospective. The rightful possession of such rights is called ownership. Ownership necessarily is supported by correlative rights to exclude others from enjoyment. By extension of usage, the things in which one has property rights are called one's property; thus the person who holds title to a house, even though there is a mortgage reverse mortgage, a homeowner borrows against the value of a house to receive a line of credit or monthly payments. Reverse mortgages are used by elderly homeowners as a way of obtaining cash, and normally the loan is paid off when the homeowner dies (or sells the property).
..... Click the link for more information. outstanding, calls it his or her "property."

Nature of Modern Property

Modern Anglo-American property law provides at least potentially for the ownership of nearly all things that have or may have value. The terminology and much of the content of modern property law stem from its origins in feudalism feudalism (fy
..... Click the link for more information. . The fundamental division is into realty (or real estate or real property) and personalty (or personal property). (For rules affecting marital property, see husband and wife husband and wife, the legal aspects of the married state (for the sociological aspects, see marriage ).

The Marriage Contract

Marriage is a contractual relationship between a man and a woman that vests the parties with a new legal status.
..... Click the link for more information. ; for certain special types of property, see copyright copyright, right granted by statute to the author or originator of certain literary, artistic, and musical productions whereby for a limited period of time he or she controls the use of the product.
..... Click the link for more information. and patent patent, in law, governmental grant of some privilege, property, or authority. Today patent refers to the granting to the inventor of a useful product or process the privilege to exclude others from making that invention.
..... Click the link for more information. .)

Realty

Realty is chiefly land and improvements built thereon. Sometimes it is comprehensively, but loosely, described as lands, tenements (holdings by another's authority), and hereditaments (that which is capable of being inherited). Formerly its chief characteristics in a legal sense were that it went by descent to the heir of the owner (who had no control over its disposition) and that ownership might be recovered from any other party by a lawsuit (a so-called real action). Also possessing such characteristics, and hence classified as real property, were titles of honor, heirlooms, and advowsons, i.e., rights to sell ecclesiastical benefices. The manner in which realty is owned is called an estate; specifically, ownership is a fee of some sort, for example, an estate in fee simple (see tenure 2)). Spiritual welfare was provided for by frankalmoign tenure, i.e., granting lands in charity to religious bodies. Serjeanty tenure furnished the king with needed officials and with personal services.
..... Click the link for more information. ).

Personalty

Personal property consists chiefly of movables, that is, portable objects. Typically (but by no means invariably) the owner can by will will, in law, document expressing the wishes of a person (known as a testator) concerning the disposition of her property after her death. If a person dies intestate, i.e.
..... Click the link for more information. , gift gift, in law, voluntary transfer of property from one person to another without any compensation for it and without any obligation of an agreement or contract. The one who gives is the donor; the one who receives the gift, the donee.
..... Click the link for more information. , or sale determine its distribution (note the contrast with the term descent), and if it has been wrongly taken, a lawsuit (a so-called personal action) will recover damages but will not restore the object. Certain types of interests in land are also classified as personalty; examples are leases for a period of years, mortgages, and liens.

Limits on Ownership

The need for unobstructed intercourse between nations prohibits the assertion of ownership of the high seas, and special rules apply to territorial waters (see waters, territorial waters, territorial, all waters within the jurisdiction, recognized in international law , of a country. Certain waters by their situation are controlled by one nation; these include wholly enclosed inland seas, lakes, and rivers.
..... Click the link for more information. ) and to domestic navigable water navigable water, in the broadest sense, a stream or body of water that can be used for commercial transportation. When, as in the early common law, the term is restricted to waters affected by tides, it denotes only the open sea and tidal rivers. In most U.S.
..... Click the link for more information. . Air space beyond that which can be used by airplanes is often considered not subject to ownership. In a sense, all land presently or ultimately belongs to the state, for whatever is not actually owned by the public authority may be transferred to it by escheat (when there is no heir to the owner) or in condemnation proceedings under the power of eminent domain eminent domain, the right of a government to force the owner of private property sell it if it is needed for a public use. The right is based on the doctrine that a sovereign state has dominion over all lands and buildings within its borders, which has its origins in
..... Click the link for more information. . In fact, much or most land in capitalist societies is in private hands, although public lands public land, in U.S. history, land owned by the federal government but not reserved for any special purpose, e.g., for a park or a military reservation. Public land is also called land in the public domain.
..... Click the link for more information. may be extensive and ownership of subsoil mineral wealth or of buried objects (see treasure-trove treasure-trove, in English law, buried or concealed money or precious metals without any ascertainable owner. Such property belongs to the crown. The present practice in Great Britain is for the crown to pay the finder for the treasure-trove if it is of historic or
..... Click the link for more information. ) may in some instances be public. (See also public ownership public ownership, government ownership of lands, streets, public buildings, utilities, and other business enterprises. The theory that all land and its resources belong ultimately to the people and therefore to the government is very ancient.
..... Click the link for more information. .)

Development of Property Law

Protection and content are given to the ownership of property by custom or law. The type of property law in a society may be taken as an index of its social and economic system. For example, a primitive pastoral tribe that must be closely united to resist its enemies may hold pasture lands in common or rotate ownership, thereby avoiding disruptive quarrels. By contrast, in societies that enjoy an economic surplus and relative security, the institution of private property may be highly developed, with marked division of ownership and a competitive struggle for control. On the other hand, private property may be all but eliminated in certain societies, as in those envisioned by Karl Marx.

In Europe, the distinction between realty and personalty served the purposes of early feudal society. The ownership and disposition of land, the basis of most wealth and the keystone of the social structure, were controlled to protect society, while the ownership of personalty, being of minor importance, was almost unfettered.

As the economic system was altered during the late Middle Ages, however, personalty lost its subordinate position and grew to be the economic mainstay of the rising middle class of merchants and manufacturers. Personalty could be bought and sold in relative freedom without the hindrances that beset the disposal of land. By taking advantage of its economic freedom, the middle class was able to replace the landed aristocracy as society's dominant class. Concurrently, it sought to relieve real property of its medieval fetters in order to use it, along with personalty, as revenue-producing capital.

Gradually the law of realty tended in all important respects to be assimilated to that of personalty. In time land could be sold or distributed by will with almost perfect freedom; in effect it joined the list of other commodities. Differences of detail in the law of realty and personalty persist, especially in the transfer of realty, however, which involves great formality.

property

In law, something that is owned or possessed. Concepts of property vary widely among cultures. In the West, property is generally regarded as either tangible (e.g., land or goods) or intangible (e.g., stocks and bonds or a patent). Individual ownership of property is emphasized in Western societies, whereas in many non-Western societies property ownership is deemphasized or conceived on a more strictly communal basis. The use of property is extensively regulated throughout the West. Landowners injured by adjoining land uses may sue in nuisance in Anglo-American countries; similar actions exist in civil-law countries. Throughout the West, landowners may agree to allow others to use their land in ways that would otherwise be actionable, and such agreements may be made to bind those to whom the land is conveyed. Anglo-American law tends to divide these grants of use rights into categories that reflect their common-law origins: easements (such as rights of way), profits (such as the right to take minerals or timber), real covenants (such as a promise to pay a homeowners' association fee), and equitable servitudes (such as a promise to use the property for residential purposes only). The civil law has fewer categories, the general category “servitudes” tending to cover for them all, and is a bit more restrictive. A common means of acquiring property is by transfer from the previous owner or owners. Such transfers include sales, donations, and inheritance. See also adverse possession; community property; intellectual property; prescription; real and personal property.