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At common law, an estate is the totality of the legal rights, interests, entitlements and obligations attaching to property. In the context of wills and probate, it refers to the totality of the property which the deceased owned or in which some interest was held. It may also refer to an estate in land.
Estate in land
An estate in land may be any carved out portion of the allodial or fee simple, which is the most complete ownership that one can have of property in the common law system. An estate can be an estate for years, an estate at will, a life estate (extinguishing at the death of the holder), an estate pur auter vie (a life interest for the life of another person) or a fee tail estate (to the heirs of one's body) or some more limited kind of heir (e.g. to heirs male of one's body).
Fee simple estates may be either fee simple absolute or defeasible (i.e. subject to future conditions) like fee simple determinable and fee simple subject to condition subsequent; this is the complex system of future interests (q.v.) which allows concepts of trusts and estates to elide into actuarial science through the use of life contingencies.
Estate in land can also be divided into estates of inheritance and other estates that are not of inheritance. The fee simple estate and the fee tail estate are estates of inheritance; they pass to the owner's heirs by operation of law, either without restrictions (in the case of fee simple), or with restrictions (in the case of fee tail). The estate for years and the life estate are estates not of inheritance; the owner owns nothing after the term of years has passed, and cannot pass on anything to his or her heirs.
Estate as all property
The term 'estate' is also used to refer to the whole of a person's property or of a particular kind of property (such as 'real estate' (meaning land and buildings) or 'personal estate' (meaning goods and chattels.
In the context of probate, it is all the property that passes under a will or the law of intestacy, which has to be administered by the executors or administrators.
Under the law of bankruptcy in the United States, the "estate" is defined by the Bankruptcy Code as all assets or property of any kind belonging to the debtor which is available for distribution to creditors. The bankruptcy estate is defined at . In some cases, the person with legal responsibility for the estate is the trustee. The law of England, though governed by British Acts of Parliament, is similar in this respect.
"Estate (law)"