Real Property

Something which may be held by tenure, or will pass to the heir of the possessor at his death, instead of his executor, including lands, tenements, and hereditaments, whether the latter be corporeal or incorporeal. 1 Atk. Conv. In respect to property, "real" and "personal" correspond very nearly with "immovables" and "movables" of the civil law. By the latter, "biens" is a general term for property; and these are classified into movable and immovable, and the latter are subdivided into corporeal and incorporeal. Guyot, Rep. Univ. "Biens." By "immovables" the civil law intended property which could not be removed at all, or not without destroying the same, together with such movables as are fixed to the freehold, or have been so fixed and are intended to be again united with it, although at the time severed therefrom, Tayl. Civ. Law, 475. The same distinction and rules of law as to the nature and divisions of property are adopted in Scotland, where, as by the Rogo to the heir, as distinguished from "movables," which go to executors or administrators. So, rights connected with or affecting heritable property, such as tithes, servitudes, and the like, are themselves heritable, and in this it coincides with the common law, Ersk. Inst. 192. In another respect, the Scotch coincides with the common law, in declaring growing crops of annual planting and culture not to be heritable, but to go to executors, etc., although so far a part of the real estate that they would pass by a conveyance of the land.

Ersk. Inst. 193; Williams, Ex'rs, 600.

Though the term "real," as applied to property, in distinction from "personal," is now so familiar, it is one of a somewhat recent introduction. While the feudal law prevailed, the terms in use in its stead were "lands," "tenements," or "hereditaments;" and these acquired the epithet of "real" from the nature of the remedy applied by law for the recovery of tliem, as distinguished from that provided in case of injuries, contracts broken, and the like. In the one case, the claimant or demandant recovered the real thing sued for, — the land itself, — while, ordinarily, in the other he could only recover recompense in the form of pecuniary damages. The term, it is said as a means of designation, did not come into general use until after the feudal system had lost its hold, nor till even as late as the commencement of the seventeenth century. One of the earliest cases in which the courts applied the distinctive terms of "real" and "personal" to estates, without any words of explanation, is _ said, to have been that of Wind c.

Jekyr'(A. D. 1719) 1 P. Wms, 575; Williams, Real Prop. 6, 7.

See "Land;" "Tenement;" "Hereditaments;" "Fixtures."