HEREDITAMENT - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

HEREDITAMENTAuthored

The Law Mind • 1185 words

Definition

Any property right capable of being inherited. Hereditament is a term of art from English real property law that describes the broadest possible category of inheritable property interests. It encompasses not only physical land and structures but also intangible rights attached to or running with land.

Two principal subcategories have long been recognized:

1. Corporeal hereditaments: Tangible, physical property — land itself, buildings, and anything permanently affixed to the soil. These are interests that can be seen and touched.

2. Incorporeal hereditaments: Intangible rights in or over land that are capable of inheritance. Examples include easements, rights of way, profits à prendre, rents, tithes, and advowsons. These rights have no physical existence of their own but are legally attached to a property interest and pass with it.

The term was used in conveyancing instruments to ensure that all inheritable interests in property — not merely the land itself — were captured by a deed or devise. In many older instruments, the phrase "lands, tenements, and hereditaments" was a standard formula of conveyancing comprehensiveness.

Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Property which can be inherited; also, the act of inheriting.

Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Any species of property that may be inherited; lands, tenements, anything corporeal or incorporeal, real, personal, or mixed, that may descend to an heir."

The common definitions are not wrong, but they are incomplete in a way that matters for legal research. Ordinary usage suggests hereditament is simply a synonym for "inheritable property" — a broad, neutral category. In legal usage, the term carries structural weight: the corporeal/incorporeal distinction it encodes is the organizing framework for a significant portion of classical real property doctrine. A researcher who treats hereditament as merely a fancy word for "inheritance" will miss the analytical work the term is doing in historical texts.

Common Confusion

Hereditament is sometimes conflated with the related terms tenement and inheritance. Tenement, in the legal sense, refers to any property held by one person from another — a category that includes but is not limited to hereditaments. Inheritance, meanwhile, describes the mode of succession, not the nature of the property interest itself. A hereditament is defined by its capacity to descend to an heir, but the word focuses on the property interest, not the act of transmission. Researchers should also take care not to read hereditament in older documents as referring exclusively to real property: incorporeal hereditaments could include interests that modern law would classify differently, and some authorities historically included certain personal property interests capable of inheritance.

Recognized Forms

/SUBTYPES

Corporeal hereditaments: Physical land and permanent fixtures. The paradigm case is the freehold estate in land.

Incorporeal hereditaments: Rights and privileges in or over land without physical substance. Classical English law identified a standard catalog: easements, profits à prendre, rights of way, rents (including fee farm rents), tithes, commons, franchises, offices, dignities, and advowsons. This list is not exhaustive, and historical sources vary in how they classify borderline interests.

Why It Matters in Research

Hereditament is a foundational term for reading historical conveyancing documents, treatises, and cases from the English and early American common law tradition. Several research traps are worth flagging:

The standard conveyancing formula. The phrase "lands, tenements, and hereditaments" appears in deeds, wills, statutes, and judicial opinions from the medieval period through the nineteenth century and beyond. Understanding what hereditament added to this formula — namely, incorporeal interests that might not be captured by "lands" or "tenements" alone — is essential to interpreting the scope of a historical grant or devise.

The incorporeal hereditament category. Many interests that modern lawyers would approach through contract, easement, or statutory frameworks were historically analyzed as incorporeal hereditaments. This affects how cases are indexed and how treatises are organized. A researcher looking for doctrine on rights of way or profits in older sources may need to navigate under this heading.

American reception. American jurisdictions largely inherited the English framework but applied it unevenly. By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many American courts and legislatures had simplified or collapsed the corporeal/incorporeal distinction in statutory codifications of property law. A term that appears in an 1850 American deed may carry different freight than the same term in an 1850 English conveyance.

Statutory use. Some American recording acts, fee simple statutes, and deed form statutes use the word hereditament as a term of art. Researchers should check whether a controlling statute defines the term or relies on common law meaning.

Connection to future interests and estates. The analysis of what could descend to an heir was historically intertwined with the law of estates — fee simple, fee tail, life estates — and with the rules governing future interests. Hereditament doctrine is therefore a node connecting property, succession, and conveyancing throughout the corpus.

Historical Dictionary Support

The available source material for this entry is fragmentary. Burrill's Law Dictionary entry begins with the Low Latin root (hæredimentum, from hæredi-) but was cut off in the supplied excerpt. Rapalje & Lawrence provides the Low Latin derivation (hereditamentum, from hereditas, inheritance) and makes a historically significant observation: the word appears to be "a comparatively modern word in English law," with the older term being herit- (presumably heritance or heriot). This is a useful caution against reading the term back too far into medieval sources without verification. Anderson's Dictionary of Law does not appear to have supplied a direct entry for hereditament in the excerpts provided; the surrounding entries concern heir presumptive and heiress.

Webster's 1913, drawing on Blackstone, provides the most complete common-source synthesis: "lands, tenements, anything corporeal or incorporeal, real, personal, or mixed, that may descend to an heir." This confirms the breadth of the classical definition but should be read alongside Blackstone's Commentaries directly for the full analytical structure, as the dictionary entry compresses doctrine that Blackstone develops at length.

What the historical dictionaries collectively underemphasize is the practical significance of the corporeal/incorporeal distinction as an organizational framework for property doctrine — a gap that encyclopedia and treatise sources in the corpus will need to fill.

Jurisdictional Note

In England, the term retains doctrinal significance in real property and conveyancing law, though modern statutory reform has substantially reorganized the underlying subject matter. In the United States, use of the term varies by state and era; many modern American statutes have replaced or supplemented it with more specific language, but it continues to appear in older recorded instruments and in states whose property codes retain traditional common law vocabulary. Researchers working with Louisiana materials should note that Louisiana's civil law tradition uses different organizing concepts and the term hereditament may appear only in borrowed common law contexts.

HEREDITAMENTmain

Rapalje & Lawrence • 1888

ENTIRE TENANCY.-A sole possession by one person, called "severalty," which is contrary to several tenancy where a joint or common possession is in one or more.-Wharton. ENTIRE USE, BENEFIT, &C., (in a trust deed). 3 Ired. (N. C.) Eq. 414. -LOW LATIN: hereditamentum (Du Cange s. v.), from hereditas, inherit ance. The word seems to be a comparatively modern word in English law. The old word is heritage. Britt. 186 b. 1. "Whatsoever may be inherited is an hereditament." (Co. Litt. 6a; Shep. Touch. 91.) In other words, when a right is of such a nature that on the death of its owner intestate it descends to his heir, it is a hereditament. The term includes a few rights unconnected with land, but it is generally used as the widest expression for real property of all kinds, and is therefore employed in conveyances after the words "lands," and "tenements," to include everything of the nature of realty which they do not cover. The principal division of hereditaments is into those which lie in livery, and those which lie in grant. See GRANT; LIVERY. 2. Lying in livery, or corporeal. - Hereditaments lying in livery are those real, personal, and mixed. Real hereditaments are lands and tenements. A personal hereditament is one which concerns neither lands nor tenements, such as an annuity granted to a man and his heirs. A mixed hereditament is partly real and partly personal, as where "the king created an earl of such a county or other place, to hold that dignity to him and his heires, this dignity is personall, and also concerneth lands and tenements." Co. Litt. 2a. 5. Legal, or equitable.-Hereditaments are also either legal, namely, such as descend to the heir by the rules of the common law, as in the preceding examples, or equitable, namely, those rights which exist only by the rules of equity. Thus, an equity of redemption (q. v.) and the interest of an heir in money directed to be laid out in the purchase of land, are equitable hereditaments. Burt. Comp. Eq 1443. See CONVERSION. 26. Collateral.-Coke says, that th franchises of chase, warren, and park ar

HEREDITAMENTmain

Anderson's Dictionary of Law • 1890

Heir presumptive. He who, if the ancestor should die immediately, would, in the present circumstances of things, be his heir; but whose right of inheritance may be defeated by the contingency of some nearer heir being born.1 Heiress. A female heir; but, in lawlanguage, "heir" includes both sexes. At common law, "heir" is a word of inheritance, necessary to the grant of an estate larger than a life interest. This nicety is a relic of feudal strictness.3 Unless changed by statute, the rule requiring the use of the word is imperative: no synonym will supply its place; nor will any word of perpetuity.4 To bind his heirs, an obligor must use the word "heir" or its equivalent; not so, to bind an administrator or an executor.5 See ADOPT, 3; DESCENT; HEIRLOOM; HEREDITAMENT; INHERIT; PURCHASE, 2; RIGHT, 1. 2. In civil law, he who is called to the "succession" (q. v.), whether by the act of the deceased or by operation of law. The universal successor is the "testamentary heir;" and, in cases of intestacy, the next of kin by blood is the "heir by intestacy" or "heir-at-law." The former corresponds to the executor, the latter to the administrator, of the common law. The "heir " administers both the real and the personal estate. See HÆRES. Heirloom. Such personalty as, contrary to the nature of chattels, goes by special custom to the heir along with the inheritance, and not to the executor of the last proprietor.7 "Loom" is in Saxon geloma, leoma: limb, member; so that "heirloom" is a limb or member of the inheritance. Heirlooms are generally such things as cannot be taken away without damaging or dismembering the freehold: as, charters, deeds, and other evidences of title to land. with the chests containing them; chimney-pieces, pumps, old fixed or dormant tables, benches and the like; also, the ancient jewels of the crown. Of the same nature is a monument or tombstone, a pew in a church, and like articles which, by special custom, cannot be devised away from the heir." Or, again, "loom" meant, at first, an implement for weaving, and, later, any household article-a table, cupboard, bedstead, wainscot, and the like. These came to be called "heir-looms" because, by special 12 Bl. Com. 208, custom, they went to the heir of the owner at his decease, with the house in which they were used. 1 Heirlooms are properly portraits, coats of arms, paintings, and such like, of the former owners of an inheritance.2 A bill in equity will lie for the specific delivery of an heirloom to the rightful owner. 3 Heirlooms do not seem to be recognized by the law of this country. Anything that may be inherited, be it corporeal or incorporeal, real, personal, or mixed.7 The word is almost as comprehensive as property. Corporeal hereditament. Such thing as affects the senses, as may be seen and handled. Incorporeal hereditament. Is not the object of sensation, can neither be seen nor handled; is a creature of the mind, exists only in contemplation. See CORPO-

HEREDITAMENTmain

Burrill's Law Dictionary • 1870

[L. Lat. hæredi-

HEREDITAMENTn.

Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913

Any species of property that may be inherited; lands, tenements, anything corporeal or incorporeal, real, personal, or mixed, that may descend to an heir. Blackstone.

hereditamentnoun

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

Wiktionary contributors • CC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
Extracted and formatted for display by Law Mind. Source link opens the current Wiktionary page and its contributor history; it is not a frozen copy of this extract.

Property which can be inherited. | Inheritance; the act of inheriting.

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