Definition
A chattel is any item of property that does not amount to a freehold or fee simple interest in land. The term encompasses nearly every form of property outside of real estate held in fee, making it one of the broadest classification terms in property law.
Chattels divide into two recognized categories:
1. Chattels real: Interests in land that fall short of a freehold — most commonly leaseholds. They are called "real" because they concern or "savor of" the realty, but they are treated as personal property in terms of how they pass and are administered.
2. Chattels personal: Movable, tangible items of property — the ordinary sense in which the word is used in modern practice. Livestock, furniture, vehicles, goods, and equipment are all chattels personal.
The term is broader than "goods" or "effects": it encompasses animate property (animals, and historically, enslaved persons) as well as inanimate objects. In the law of wills and conveyancing, however, courts have at times treated "chattels" and "goods" as equivalent in import when construing a devise.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Tangible, movable property; also, a slave.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Any item of movable or immovable property except the freehold or things parcel of it; a more extensive term than goods or effects.
The common-language definition, even in 1913, captured the legal term fairly accurately — chattel never developed a strong everyday meaning separate from its legal one. Two gaps are worth noting. First, modern common usage has narrowed the term to movables, dropping the "chattels real" category entirely; a researcher encountering "chattel" in a lease or landlord-tenant context must remember the immovable dimension. Second, the association of "chattel" with slavery — as in "chattel slavery" — appears in modern general usage and reflects a genuine historical legal usage: enslaved persons were classified as chattels personal under antebellum American law, a classification that shaped property, inheritance, tort, and constitutional doctrine throughout the nineteenth century.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
CHATTELS REAL: Leasehold estates and other interests in land that do not rise to the level of a freehold. They descend and are administered as personal property rather than real property. The category also historically included interests coupled with a real property obligation, such as certain mortgages before foreclosure.
CHATTELS PERSONAL: All movable, tangible personal property. This is the dominant modern usage of the term. Subdivided in some older authorities into choses in possession (physical items held) and choses in action (claims enforceable at law), though the latter distinction is now usually handled under separate terminology.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encounter "chattel" in several distinct legal contexts, and the word's breadth is the principal trap.
First, the chattel real category is largely obsolete in modern American property discourse but appears throughout historical sources on landlord-tenant law, mortgage law, and estates. A nineteenth-century treatise describing a leasehold as a "chattel" is not being imprecise — it is using the term correctly under the framework of the time. Researchers analyzing historical lease disputes, mortgage instruments, or intestate succession of leaseholds must account for this classification.
Second, the law of trespass to chattels and conversion is built entirely on the chattels personal category. These torts protect possessory interests in movable property, and the threshold distinction — trespass to chattels for intermeddling short of full deprivation, conversion for a serious enough interference to justify forced sale — depends on correctly identifying the item as a chattel. The Law Mind Torts Encyclopedia entries on trespass to chattels and conversion are the appropriate starting points for those doctrine threads.
Third, the chattel-slavery context requires special care. Legal documents from the antebellum period — deeds, wills, estate inventories, insurance policies, judicial opinions — treat enslaved persons as chattels personal. The legal incidents of chattel status (transferability, descent, attachment, replevin) applied to human beings under this regime. Researchers working in this period must be alert to this usage both for historical accuracy and because it shaped broader property doctrine in ways that persisted after abolition.
Fourth, chattel mortgages — the historical predecessor to modern secured transactions under Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code — frequently appear in late nineteenth and early twentieth century commercial law sources. The term "chattel mortgage" will not map cleanly onto modern security interest terminology without attention to the doctrinal shift accomplished by the UCC.
Fifth, in wills and estate research, the phrase "goods and chattels" was a standard drafting formula. Courts sometimes treated it as coextensive with "personal estate" and sometimes construed it more narrowly. Checking the jurisdiction and date is essential before relying on any interpretive rule of construction.
Historical Dictionary Support
The shelf sources converge on the core definition — property not amounting to a freehold — but they illuminate different dimensions of the term.
Burrill's Law Dictionary offers the most comprehensive treatment, tracing the term's reach and its use in the plural (chattels, catalla) as the standard form in legal instruments. Burrill emphasizes that chattel is "a very comprehensive term in our law" encompassing "every species of property which is not real estate or a freehold," citing Kent's Commentaries for the proposition. The Latin and Law French roots (catallum, chatelle, captale) are noted, reflecting the term's Norman origins in English property law.
Both editions of Black's Law Dictionary are substantively consistent with each other and with Burrill. Black's stresses the animate/inanimate distinction — "chattels is a more comprehensive one than goods, as it includes animate as well as inanimate property" — citing Chitty's Blackstone. Both editions recognize the real/personal subdivision and note that in a devise, courts have treated chattels and goods as equivalent. Black's 2nd edition adds case citations to support the basic definition.
Rapalje & Lawrence focuses primarily on the chattel real subcategory, explaining it in the context of leasehold estates and the concept of an interest that "savors of the realty" while being treated as personalty. This framing is essential for understanding why leaseholds were historically administered through personal property rules rather than real property rules.
Anderson's Dictionary of Law does not appear to have produced usable text on the term chattel from the available excerpt, which pulled material on corporate charters. Researchers should weight Anderson's lightly on this entry.
A notable gap across all historical sources: none addresses the chattel mortgage as a distinct secured transaction device, which became enormously significant in nineteenth-century commercial practice. For that thread, researchers should consult treatises on personal property security rather than general law dictionaries.
Jurisdictional Note
The chattel real category has been largely abolished or absorbed in modern American law, particularly after widespread adoption of the Uniform Commercial Code for secured transactions and modern landlord-tenant statutory reform. In English law, the chattel real framework retained more formal significance longer. Researchers working in pre-UCC American commercial law or in English common law sources must apply the historical framework, not the modern American one.