Life

That state of animals and plants or of an organized being, in which its natural functions and motions are performed or in which its organs are capable of performing their functions. Webster. The sum of the forces by which dcath is resisted. Bichat. -Life-annuity. An engagement to pay an income yearly during the life of some person; also the sum thus promised.

— Life-estate. An estate whose duration is limited to the life of the party holding it, or of some other person ; a freehold estate, not of inhe not amounting to ownership, and limited by a term of life, either that of the person in whom the right is vested or that of another.

— Life-land, or Life-hold. Land held on a lease for lives.

— Life of a writ. The period during which a writ (execution, etc.) remains effective and can lawfully be served or levied, terminating with the day on which, by law or by its own terms, it is to be returned into court.

— Life peerage. Letters patent, conferring the dignity of baron for life only, do not enable the grantee to sit and vote in the house of lords, not even with the usual writ of summons to the house. Wharton.

— Life policy. A policy of life insurance; a policy of insurance upon the life of an individual.

— Life-rent. In Scotch law. An estate for life; a right to the use and enjoyment of an estate or thing for one's life, but without destruction of its substance. They are either legal, such as terce and curtesy, (g. v.,) or conventional, i. e., created by act of the parties. Conventional life-rents are either simple, where the owner of an estate grants a life-interest to another, or by reservation, where the owner, in conveying away the fee, reserves a life-estate to himself.

— Life-renter. In Scotch law. A tenant for life without waste. Bell.

— Life tenant. One who holds an estate in lands for the period of his own life or that of another certain person.

— Natural life. The period of a person's existence considered as continuing until terminated by physical dissolution or death occurring in the course of nature; used in contradistinction to that juristic and artificial conception of life as an aggregate of legal rights or the possession of a legal personality, which could be terminated by "civil death," that is, that extinction of personality which resulted from entering a monastery or being attainted of treason or felony. See People v. Wright, 89 Mich. 70, 50 N. W. 792.