Personal property is

property 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, re ...

that is movable. In

common law Common law (also known as judicial precedent, judge-made law, or case law) is the body of law primarily developed through judicial decisions rather than statutes. Although common law may incorporate certain statutes, it is largely based on prece ...

systems, personal property may also be called chattels or personalty. In civil law systems, personal property is often called movable property or movables—any property that can be moved from one location to another. Personal property can be understood in comparison to real estate, immovable property or

real property In English common law, real property, real estate, immovable property or, solely in the US and Canada, realty, refers to parcels of land and any associated structures which are the property of a person. For a structure (also called an Land i ...

(such as land and buildings). Movable property on land (larger

livestock Livestock are the Domestication, domesticated animals that are raised in an Agriculture, agricultural setting to provide labour and produce diversified products for consumption such as meat, Egg as food, eggs, milk, fur, leather, and wool. The t ...

, for example) was not automatically sold with the land, it was "personal" to the owner and moved with the owner. The word ''cattle'' is the Old Norman variant of

Old French Old French (, , ; ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France approximately between the late 8th [2-4; we might wonder whether there's a point at which it's appropriate to talk of the beginnings of French, that is, when it wa ...

''chatel'', chattel, and today cheptel (derived from Latin ''capitalis'', "of the head"), which was once synonymous with general movable personal property.

Classifications

Personal property may be classified in a variety of ways.

Intangible

Intangible personal property or "intangibles" refers to personal property that cannot actually be moved, touched or felt, but instead represents something of value such as negotiable instruments, security (finance), securities, service (economics), and intangible assets including Chose (English law), chose in action.

Tangible

Tangible personal property refers to any type of property that can generally be moved (i.e., it is not attached to real property or land), touched or felt. These generally include items such as furniture, clothing, jewelry, sunglasses, eyeglasses, art, writings, or household goods. In some cases, there can be formal title documents that show the ownership and transfer rights of that property after a person's death (for example, motor vehicles, boats, etcetera) In many cases, however, tangible personal property will not be "titled" in an owner's name and is presumed to be whatever property he or she was in possession of at the time of his or her death.

Other distinctions

Accountants distinguish personal property from real property because personal property can be depreciated faster than improvements (while land is not depreciable at all). It is an owner's right to get tax benefits for chattel, and there are businesses that specialize in appraising personal property, or chattel. The distinction between these types of property is significant for a variety of reasons. Usually, one's rights on movables are more attenuated than one's rights on immovables (or real property). The statutes of limitations or prescriptive periods are usually shorter when dealing with personal or movable property. Real property rights are usually enforceable for a much longer period of time and in most jurisdictions real estate and immovables are registered in government-sanctioned land registers. In some jurisdictions, rights (such as a

lien A lien ( or ) is a form of security interest granted over an item of property to secure the payment of a debt or performance of some other obligation. The owner of the property, who grants the lien, is referred to as the ''lienee'' and the pers ...

or other security interest) can be registered against personal or movable property. In common law, it is possible to place a

mortgage A mortgage loan or simply mortgage (), in civil law (legal system), civil law jurisdictions known also as a hypothec loan, is a loan used either by purchasers of real property to raise funds to buy real estate, or by existing property owners t ...

upon real property. Such a mortgage requires payment, or the owner of the mortgage can seek

foreclosure Foreclosure is a legal process in which a lender attempts to recover the balance of a loan from a borrower who has Default (finance), stopped making payments to the lender by forcing the sale of the asset used as the Collateral (finance), coll ...

. Personal property can often be secured with a similar kind of device, variously called a '' chattel mortgage'', a ''trust receipt'', or a ''

security interest In finance, a security interest is a legal right granted by a debtor to a creditor over the debtor's property (usually referred to as the '' collateral'') which enables the creditor to have recourse to the property if the debtor defaults in m ...

''. In the United States, Article 9 of the

Uniform Commercial Code The Uniform Commercial Code (UCC), first published in 1952, is one of a number of uniform acts that have been established as law with the goal of harmonizing the laws of sales and other commercial transactions across the United States through U ...

governs the creation and enforcement of security interests in most (but not all) types of personal property. There is no similar institution to the mortgage in the civil law, however a

hypothec Hypothec (; , , from Lat. ''hypotheca'', from Gk. : hypothēkē), sometimes tacit hypothec, is a term used in civil law systems (e.g. the law of most of Continental Europe) to refer to a registered real security of a creditor over real estate ...

is a device to secure real rights against property. These real rights follow the property along with the ownership. In common law a lien also remains on the property, and it is not extinguished by alienation of the property; liens may be real or equitable. Many jurisdictions levy a personal

property tax A property tax (whose rate is expressed as a percentage or per mille, also called ''millage'') is an ad valorem tax on the value of a property.In the OECD classification scheme, tax on property includes "taxes on immovable property or Wealth t ...

, an annual tax on the privilege of owning or possessing personal property within the boundaries of the jurisdiction. Automobile and boat registration fees are a subset of this tax. Most household goods are exempt as long as they are kept or used within the household. The distinction between tangible and intangible personal property is also significant in some of the jurisdictions which impose sales taxes. In Canada, for example, provincial and federal sales taxes were imposed primarily on sales of tangible personal property whereas sales of intangibles tended to be exempt. The move to value added taxes, under which almost all transactions are taxable, has diminished the significance of the distinction.

Personal vis-à-vis private property

* Marxists argue that private property is a

social relation A social relation is the fundamental unit of analysis within the social sciences, and describes any voluntary or involuntary interpersonal relationship between two or more conspecifics within and/or between groups. The group can be a language or ...

ship between the owner and persons deprived, i.e. not a relationship between person and thing. Private property may include artifacts, factories, mines, dams, infrastructure, natural vegetation, mountains, deserts, and seas these generate capital for the owner without the owner necessarily having to perform any physical labor. Conversely, those who perform labor using somebody else's private property are considered deprived of the value of their work in Marxist theory, and are instead given a salary that is disjointed from the value generated by the worker. * Personal property, or '' possessions'', includes "items intended for personal use" (e.g., one's toothbrush, clothes, and vehicles, and rarely, money). The owner has a distributive right to exclude others (i.e. the right to command a "fair share" of personal property). * In anarchist theory, ''private property'' typically refers to capital or the means of production, whereas ''personal property'' refers to consumer and non-capital goods and services.

References

External links

Australia Personal Property Securities Act 2009

Personal Property Securities Register Australia

United States Tax Convention with the Kingdom of Morocco 1977
(PDF) * {{Authority control Property law