Merger

is where a greater and lesser thing meet, and the latter loses its separate existence and sinks into the former. It is applied to estates, rights, crimes, and torts. cide and meet in one and the same person, without any intermediate estate, the less is immediately merged, that is, sunk or drowned in the latter; example, if there be a tenant for years, and the reversion in fee simple descends to, or is purchased by him, the term of years is merged in the inheritance, and no longer exists; but they must be to one and the same person, at one and the same time, in one and the same right.

2 Bl. Com. 177; 3 Mass. Rep. 172; Latch, 153; Poph. 166; 1 John. Ch. R. 417; 3 John. Ch. R. 53; 6 Madd. Ch. R. 119.

The estate in which the merger takes place, is not enlarged by the accession of the preceding estate; and the greater, or only subsisting estate, continues, after the merger, precisely of the same quantity and extent of ownership, as it was before the accession of the estate which is merged, and the lesser estate is extinguished, Prest. on Conv. 7; asa general rule, equal estates will not drown in each other. The merger is produced, either from the meeting of an estate of higher degree, with an estate of inferior degree; or from the meeting of the particular estate and the immediate reversion, in the same person.

4 Kent, Com. 98.

Vide 3 Prest. on Conv. which is devoted to this subject.

Vide generally, 15 Vin. Ab. 361; Dane’s Ab. Index, h. t.; and Confusion; Consolidation; Unity of possession.