Definition
"My share" is a possessive phrase used in legal instruments — most commonly wills, trust documents, deeds of partition, and contracts — to designate the portion of property, proceeds, or an estate that belongs to or is allocated to the speaker or declarant. It is not a technical term of art but a term of legal significance when it appears in a document, because courts must interpret what the declarant intended to include within "my share" at the time of execution.
In practice, "my share" typically refers to:
1. In succession and estates: the fractional or defined interest a testator holds in jointly owned, inherited, or co-tenancy property, which that person purports to devise or bequeath.
2. In partition and co-ownership: the undivided interest belonging to one co-tenant, co-heir, or co-owner in real or personal property held in common.
3. In commercial and contractual contexts: an agreed or proportional portion of profits, losses, costs, or assets belonging to one party under a partnership agreement, joint venture, or similar arrangement.
Because the phrase is defined by context rather than statute, its legal meaning in any given document turns on surrounding language, the nature of the property, and the declarant's demonstrable intent.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "My share" means the portion of something that belongs to or is due to a particular person — as in "my share of the bill" or "my share of the work."
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Share" is defined as "a part or portion belonging to, distributed to, contributed by, or owed by a person; as, my share of a dinner."
The gap between common and legal meaning is narrow in concept but significant in consequence. In ordinary speech, "my share" is informal and approximate. In a legal instrument, the same phrase triggers interpretive doctrines: courts must determine whether it passes an undivided fractional interest, a specific asset, after-acquired property, or only property the declarant owned at execution. What seems plain in everyday language becomes a question of construction in probate or contract litigation.
Why It Matters in Research
The phrase "my share" appears frequently in older wills, deeds, and estate instruments precisely because non-lawyers drafting or dictating documents used natural language rather than precise legal terms. This creates recurring interpretive problems that generated a body of case law — particularly in 19th- and early 20th-century probate courts — on what property passed when a testator said "my share" without further specification.
Researchers working in the Law Mind corpus should watch for several traps:
First, historical sources do not treat "my share" as a standalone dictionary entry. Rapalje & Lawrence's entries for adjacent concepts — "Legal Heir," "Legal Representatives," "Leaving Issue," "Nearest of Blood" — are the relevant surrounding terms, because disputes over "my share" in estates almost always implicate who takes, what interest passes, and whether issue survive to claim it. These entries are the functional research neighbors.
Second, the phrase behaves differently depending on the property regime. In a tenancy in common, "my share" is an alienable undivided interest. In a joint tenancy, the right of survivorship may defeat a purported devise of "my share" entirely. In a partnership, "my share" of profits may be distinct from "my share" of capital or assets on dissolution.
Third, in modern income-sharing and cost-sharing contexts (relevant to family law and tax research), "my share" appears in support calculations and cost-allocation agreements. The income shares model for child support, for example, apportions each parent's contribution based on their proportional share of combined income — a formal, calculated "share" governed by statutory formula rather than document interpretation.
Fourth, in corporate and securities law, "my shares" (plural, with the corporate-law meaning of share as a unit of stock) is a distinct concept governed by entirely different rules. Researchers should distinguish the interpretive question (what did the declarant mean by "my share" in a will?) from the transactional question (what consideration was given for shares, and is the issuance valid?).
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence does not carry a dedicated entry for "my share." This is consistent with the phrase's character: it is an interpretive problem, not a defined term. The dictionary's entries for "Legal Heir," "Legal Representatives," "Nearest of Blood," and "Nearest Relations" collectively illuminate the questions courts asked when construing "my share" in testamentary instruments — who qualifies as a taker, what relationship is required, and whether the class closes at death or at distribution. "Leaving Issue" and "Leaving No Issue Behind Him" are directly relevant when a co-heir's share lapses or passes by representation.
Historical legal dictionaries generally handle "my share" only obliquely, through entries on "share," "moiety," "undivided interest," and "partition." Bouvier and similar 19th-century dictionaries treat "share" as the relevant headword, defining it in terms of stock (corporate shares) and co-ownership portions. The possessive construction "my share" as a term of document construction is left to treatise writers on wills and to judicial opinions.
What historical sources miss: the modern income-allocation usage (child support, cost-sharing payments) is entirely absent from 19th-century dictionaries, as these are 20th- and 21st-century regulatory and statutory constructs.
Jurisdictional Note
Interpretive rules for ambiguous possessive terms in wills and deeds vary by jurisdiction, particularly regarding whether "my share" in a will passes after-acquired interests in the same property and whether it includes property acquired between will execution and death. Researchers should not assume uniform results across states without checking local rules of construction.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Family Law Encyclopedia: Child Support — Income Shares Model (family_90) — for the formal proportional-share framework in support calculations.
The Law Mind Tax Encyclopedia: Exclusions — Certain Cost-Sharing Payments (tax_54) — for cost-sharing allocation contexts where a party's "share" of payments has tax consequences.
The Law Mind Business Organizations & Corporate Law Encyclopedia: Corporate Finance — Consideration for Shares and Watered Stock (business_75) — for the corporate-law meaning of "shares" as units of stock, distinct from the co-ownership and testamentary usage.