PERSONAL PROPERTY, one branch of the main division of the common law of property, the other being "real property." The division of property into real and personal represents in a great measure the division into immoveable and moveable, inci dentally recognized in Roman law and generally adopted since.
Personal estate is divided in English law into chattels real and chattels personal; the latter are again divided into choses in pos session and choses in action (see CHATTEL; CHOSE).
Interest in personal property may be either absolute or quali fied.
There are several cases in which, by statute or otherwise, prop erty is taken. out of the class of real or personal to which it seems naturally to belong. By the operation of the equitable doctrine of conversion money directed to be employed in the purchase of land, or land directed to be turned into money, is in general regarded as that species of property into which it is directed to be converted. An example of property prima facie real which is treated as personal is an estate pur autre vie, which, since 14 Geo. II. C. 20, S. 9, 1740-41 (now replaced by the Wills Act 1837, S. 6) is distributable as personal property in the absence of a special occupant. Examples of property prima facie personal which is treated as real are fixtures, heirlooms, such as deeds and family portraits. (See further SuccEssioN.) The terms heritable and moveable of Scots law in a general sense correspond with the real and personal of English law. Move able or personal property is, in Scots law, subdivided into corporeal and incorporeal moveables. Corporeal or physical things, not being land or attached to land, are moveable property. Incorporeal things, or rights, are said to form moveable property when they do not affect land, and are not similar to rights affecting land in hav ing a tract of future time. By the Titles to Land Consolidation
(Scotland) Act 1868, s. 117, heritable securities are moveable as far as regards the succession of the creditor, unless executors are expressly excluded. They still, however, remain heritable quoad fiscum, as between husband and wife, in computing legitim, and as far as regards the succession of the debtor. Annuities, as having tractum futuri temporis, are heritable, and an obligation to pay them falls upon the heir of the deceased. At common law an obli gation to pay money was, of ter the term of payment, considered heritable in the person of the creditor as having a tract of future time. Bonds .containing such obligations, except where the cred itor's executors are excluded, are now moveables in the creditor's succession. See the Scots Act of 1661 cap. 32 and the Conveyancy (Scotland) Act 1924 S. 22 (I).
The law in the United States agrees in most respects with that of England. Chattels real include all estates in land less than free hold. Legislation in some States has, however, made terms for years and estates pur autre vie real property. Title-deeds are generally regarded as personalty inasmuch as their importance is less than in England, due to the Land Registration Acts. Shares in some of the early American corporations were, like New River shares in England, made real estate by statute, as in the case of the Cape Sable Company in Maryland (Schouler, Law of Personal Property, i.). Otherwise, shares of stock, like other choses in action, are regarded as personalty.