Definition
Hereditaments are all things capable of being inherited. The term is the broadest and most technically comprehensive description of real property in common law, encompassing not only physical land and everything attached to it, but also intangible rights associated with land and, in some usages, personal property capable of descending to an heir by custom.
Two principal subtypes are recognized:
1. CORPOREAL HEREDITAMENTS: Tangible, physical property — essentially synonymous with land itself. This includes the soil, buildings, fixtures, and anything permanently affixed to the earth.
2. INCORPOREAL HEREDITAMENTS: Intangible rights issuing out of, or annexed to, corporeal property. These are rights in land rather than the land itself — easements, profits à prendre, advowsons, rents, and similar abstract interests that nonetheless pass with inheritance.
The term also appears in the older tripartite formula "lands, tenements, and hereditaments," a standard conveyancing phrase designed to capture the full universe of inheritable real property interests. In that formula, hereditaments functions as the catch-all, sweeping in anything not already covered by "lands" or "tenements."
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Common Language
Wiktionary: "plural of hereditament."
The common language offers no independent meaning — this is pure legal terminology without a parallel ordinary English sense. The word does not appear in general use outside legal instruments, treatises, and historical documents. The COMMON LANGUAGE section is omitted accordingly.
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Common Confusion
HEREDITAMENTS vs. TENEMENTS: These terms overlap substantially in historical usage and often appear together in the same phrase, which can obscure their distinct meanings. "Tenements" in its legal sense covers things held by any tenure — real property broadly — while "hereditaments" specifically emphasizes inheritability. In practice, nearly all tenements are hereditaments, but the emphasis differs: tenements describes the relationship of tenure; hereditaments describes the capacity to descend to an heir. Researchers encountering either term in isolation in historical deeds or pleadings should treat them as pointing toward the same broad concept of real property, but should not assume they are interchangeable in all contexts.
HEREDITAMENTS vs. CHATTELS REAL: Leasehold interests occupy an awkward middle ground. They were historically treated as personal property (chattels) yet had a connection to land. Some older sources classify certain chattels real as "mixed hereditaments" capable of descending to an heir. This classification is largely obsolete but can create confusion when reading pre-20th century property texts.
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Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
CORPOREAL HEREDITAMENTS: Tangible property capable of inheritance — land, buildings, fixtures. Functionally coextensive with "land" in most modern usage.
INCORPOREAL HEREDITAMENTS: Intangible rights in or over land capable of inheritance — easements, rents, profits, franchises, advowsons, tithes, and similar abstract interests. This is the more legally consequential subcategory for research purposes, as it captures property interests that leave no physical trace in a survey or deed description.
MIXED HEREDITAMENTS: A minor historical category covering personal property that by local custom descended to the heir along with land — heirlooms being the primary example. Rarely invoked in modern law.
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Why It Matters in Research
HISTORICAL INSTRUMENT LANGUAGE: The phrase "lands, tenements, and hereditaments" appears in an enormous volume of deeds, wills, statutes, and pleadings from the medieval period through the early 20th century. Researchers encountering this formula should recognize it as a conveyancing term of art intended to be all-encompassing, not as three meaningfully distinct categories requiring separate analysis. Courts consistently treated the phrase as a unified description of real property.
THE INCORPOREAL CATEGORY IS WHERE THE COMPLEXITY LIVES: When historical sources define hereditaments, most of the substantive legal work is being done by the incorporeal subtype. Researching easements, profits à prendre, advowsons, or customary rights in older English or American sources will lead directly into incorporeal hereditaments doctrine. The corporeal/incorporeal distinction is an essential organizing principle for that research.
STATUTORY INTERPRETATION TRAPS: Older statutes — particularly tax, conveyancing, and probate legislation — use "hereditaments" as a defined term of art. The scope of a statute may turn on whether a particular interest qualifies. Researchers should not assume modern definitions map cleanly onto historical statutory usage; courts construed the term differently depending on context and era.
DECLINING USAGE BUT PERSISTENT PRESENCE: The term has largely disappeared from American legal drafting, replaced by plain-language alternatives. But it persists in: (1) older instruments still operative today, (2) English property law materials widely used in American legal history research, and (3) jurisdictions retaining archaic conveyancing forms. Encountering it in a modern document is a signal that the drafter was working from an older form or an English precedent.
CORPUS CONNECTIONS: Research into this term will intersect with entries and materials on easements, real covenants, profits à prendre, fee simple, seisin, tenure, and the law of descent. The incorporeal hereditaments category is a gateway concept for understanding how the common law handled intangible real property interests before the modern framework of servitudes was fully developed.
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Historical Dictionary Support
The source dictionaries show strong agreement on the core definition. Black's (both editions) and Bouvier's track each other closely, drawing on the same foundational authorities — Coke on Littleton (Co. Litt. 5b) and Blackstone's Commentaries (2 Bl. Comm. 17) — and define hereditaments as things capable of being inherited, corporeal or incorporeal, real, personal, or mixed. Rapalje & Lawrence adds the useful framing that "lands, tenements, and hereditaments" is to real property what "goods and chattels" is to personal property — a point that efficiently captures why the term mattered in practice.
None of the historical dictionaries adequately develops the incorporeal hereditaments subcategory beyond listing examples. A researcher relying solely on these dictionary entries would understand the term's scope but would need to go further — to Blackstone Book II, Coke's Institutes, or Williams on Real Property — to understand how incorporeal hereditaments actually functioned in transactions and litigation.
What the historical sources collectively miss: the decline of the term in American practice and the degree to which the corporeal/incorporeal distinction was absorbed into modern servitudes and property law without preserving the original vocabulary. The dictionaries treat the term as live doctrine; for most American jurisdictions after the mid-20th century, it is primarily a historical artifact.
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Jurisdictional Note
The term retains greater practical significance in English law, where "hereditament" continued as a term of art in rating (property tax) legislation well into the modern era. In the United States, the concept survives functionally but the vocabulary has largely been replaced. Researchers working with Louisiana materials should note that Louisiana's civil law tradition uses a different conceptual framework for real property and does not employ this common law terminology.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia — Real Property (for the broader framework into which hereditaments fits)
See Law Mind Encyclopedia — Corporeal and Incorporeal Property (for the central distinction within hereditaments doctrine)
See Law Mind Encyclopedia — Easements and Servitudes (for the most practically significant class of incorporeal hereditaments in modern research)
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