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Curtesy
Courtesy tenure (or curtesy/courtesy of England) is the legal term denoting the life interest which a widower (i.e. former husband) may claim in the lands of his deceased wife, under certain conditions. The tenure relates only to those lands of which his wife was in her lifetime actually seised (or sasined in Scots law) and not therefore to an estate of inheritance. The customs and the meaning of the word has considerable doubt. It has been said to be a tenure peculiar to England and to Scotland, hence called the courtesy of England and the courtesy of Scotland, yet this is erroneous, for it is found also in Germany and France. The ''Mirroir des Justices'' ascribes its introduction to King Henry I(1100–1135). The historian K.E. Digby states it to be connected with curia, having reference either to the attendance of the husband as tenant of the lands at the lord's court, or to mean simply that the husband is acknowledged tenant by the courts of England. The requisites necess ...
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Dower
Dower is a provision accorded traditionally by a husband or his family, to a wife for her support should she become widowed. It was settled on the bride (being gifted into trust) by agreement at the time of the wedding, or as provided by law. The dower grew out of the practice of bride price, which was given over to a bride's family well in advance for arranging the marriage, but during the early Middle Ages, was given directly to the bride instead. However, in popular parlance, the term may be used for a life interest in property settled by a husband on his wife at any time, not just at the wedding. The verb ''to dower'' is sometimes used''.'' In popular usage, the term ''dower'' may be confused with: *A '' dowager'' is a widow (who may receive her dower). The term is especially used of a noble or royal widow who no longer occupies the position she held during the marriage. For example, Queen Elizabeth was technically the dowager queen after the death of George VI (though s ...
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Jointure
Jointure is, in law, a provision for a wife after the death of her husband. As defined by Sir Edward Coke, it is "a competent livelihood of freehold for the wife, of lands or tenements, to take effect presently in possession or profit after the death of her husband for the life of the wife at least, if she herself be not the cause of determination or forfeiture of it': (Co. Litt. 36b). Legal definition A jointure is of two kinds, legal and equitable. A legal jointure was first authorized by the 1536 Statute of Uses. Before this statute a husband had no legal seisin in such lands as were vested in another to his "use", but merely an equitable estate. Consequently, it was usual to make settlements on marriage, the most general form being the settlement by deed of an estate to the use of the husband and wife for their lives in joint tenancy (or "jointure") so that the whole would go to the survivor. Although, strictly speaking, a jointure is a joint estate limited to both husband and ...
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Seisin
Seisin (or seizin) denotes the legal possession of a feudal fiefdom or fee, that is to say an estate in land. It was used in the form of "the son and heir of X has obtained seisin of his inheritance", and thus is effectively a term concerned with conveyancing in the feudal era. The person holding such estate is said to be "seized of it", a phrase which commonly appears in inquisitions ''post mortem'' (i.e. "The jurors find that X died seized of the manor of ..."). The monarch alone "held" all the land of England by his allodial right and all his subjects were merely his tenants under various contracts of feudal tenure. Etymology Seisin comes from Middle English ''saysen'', ''seysen'', in the legal sense of to put in possession of, or to take possession of, hence, to grasp, to seize. The Old French variations ''seisir'', ''saisir'', are from Low Latin ''sacire'', generally referred to the same source as Gothic ''satjan'', Old English ''settan'', to put in place, set. Tenures sub ...
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Entail
In English common law, fee tail or entail is a form of trust established by deed or settlement which restricts the sale or inheritance of an estate in real property and prevents the property from being sold, devised by will, or otherwise alienated by the tenant-in-possession, and instead causes it to pass automatically by operation of law to an heir determined by the settlement deed. The term ''fee tail'' is from Medieval Latin , which means "cut(-short) fee" and is in contrast to "fee simple" where no such restriction exists and where the possessor has an absolute title (although subject to the allodial title of the monarch) in the property which he can bequeath or otherwise dispose of as he wishes. Equivalent legal concepts exist or formerly existed in many other European countries and elsewhere. Purpose The fee tail allowed a patriarch to perpetuate his blood-line, family-name, honour and armorials in the persons of a series of powerful and wealthy male descendants. By kee ...
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Scots Law Legal Terminology
Scots usually refers to something of, from, or related to Scotland, including: * Scots language, a language of the West Germanic language family native to Scotland * Scots people, a nation and ethnic group native to Scotland * Scoti, a Latin name for the Gaels * SCOTS, abbreviation for Royal Regiment of Scotland * Scottish Corpus of Texts and Speech (SCOTS), a linguistic resource See also * Southern Culture on the Skids (SCOTS), an American rock band * Scot's Lo-Cost, a grocery store owned by Weis Markets * Scotch (other) * Scots Church (other) * Scots College (other) * Scott's (other) * Scottish (other) * Scotts (other) * Pound Scots The pound (Modern and Middle Scots: ''Pund'') was the currency of Scotland prior to the 1707 Treaty of Union between the Kingdom of Scotland and the Kingdom of England, which created the Kingdom of Great Britain. It was introduced by Da ..., historical currency * Scots pine, a ...
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Property Law Of The United Kingdom
Property is a system of rights that gives people legal control of valuable things, and also refers to the valuable things themselves. Depending on the nature of the property, an owner of property may have the right to consume, alter, share, redefine, rent, mortgage, pawn, sell, exchange, transfer, give away or destroy it, or to exclude others from doing these things, as well as to perhaps abandon it; whereas regardless of the nature of the property, the owner thereof has the right to properly use it under the granted property rights. In economics and political economy, there are three broad forms of property: private property, public property, and collective property (also called cooperative property). Property that jointly belongs to more than one party may be possessed or controlled thereby in very similar or very distinct ways, whether simply or complexly, whether equally or unequally. However, there is an expectation that each party's will (rather discretion) with r ...
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Widowhood In The United Kingdom
A widow (female) or widower (male) is a person whose spouse has died. Terminology The state of having lost one's spouse to death is termed ''widowhood''. An archaic term for a widow is "relict," literally "someone left over". This word can sometimes be found on older gravestones. The word "widow" comes from an Indo-European root meaning "widow" and has cognates across Indo-European languages. The male form, "widower", is first attested in the 14th century, by the 19th century supplanting "widow" with reference to men. The term ''widowhood'' can be used for either sex, at least according to some dictionaries, but the word ''widowerhood'' is also listed in some dictionaries. Occasionally, the word ''viduity'' is used. The adjective for either sex is ''widowed''. These terms are not applied to a divorcé(e) following the death of an ex-spouse. Effects on health The phenomenon that refers to the increased mortality rate after the death of a spouse is called the '' widowhood ...
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Land Tenure
In common law systems, land tenure, from the French verb "tenir" means "to hold", is the legal regime in which land owned by an individual is possessed by someone else who is said to "hold" the land, based on an agreement between both individuals. It determines who can use land, for how long and under what conditions. Tenure may be based both on official laws and policies, and on informal local customs (insofar higher law does allow that). In other words, land tenure implies a system according to which land is held by an individual or the actual tiller of the land but this person does not have legal ownership. It determines the holder's rights and responsibilities in connection with their holding. The sovereign monarch, known in England as The Crown, held land in its own right. All land holders are either its tenants or sub-tenants. ''Tenure'' signifies a legal relationship between tenant and lord, arranging the duties and rights of tenant and lord in relationship to the land. Ov ...
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Elective Share
An elective share is a term used in American law relating to inheritance, which describes a proportion of an estate which the surviving spouse of the deceased may claim in place of what they were left in the decedent's will. It may also be called a widow's share, statutory share, election against the will, or forced share. Function and operation The elective share is the modern version of the English common law concepts of dower and curtesy, both of which reserved certain portions of a decedent's estate which were reserved for the surviving spouse to prevent them from falling into poverty and becoming a burden on the community. Currently, the amount to be reserved for a spouse is determined by the law of the state where the estate is located. In most states, the elective share is between one-third and one-half of all the property in the estate, although many states require the marriage to have lasted a certain number of years for the elective share to be claimed, or adjust the s ...
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Tenement (law)
{{Wiktionary, tenement A tenement (from the Latin tenere ''to hold''), in law, is anything that is held, rather than owned. This usage is a holdover from feudalism, which still forms the basis of property law in many common law jurisdictions, in which the monarch alone owned the allodial title to all the land within his kingdom. Under feudalism, land itself was never privately "owned" but rather was "held" by a tenant (from Latin ''teneo'' "to hold") as a fee, being merely a legal right over land known in modern law as an estate in land. This was held from a superior overlord, (a mesne lord), or from the crown itself in which case the holder was termed a tenant-in-chief, upon some manner of service under one of a variety of feudal land tenures. The thing held is called a tenement, the holder is called a tenant, the manner of his holding is called a tenure, and the superior is called the landlord, or lord of the fee. These forms are still preserved in law, even though feud ...
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