A view of the modes in which property is legally transferred from one person to another, and of the legal capacity of per sons to transfer and acquire estates in lands and tenements, belongs to legal treatises.
Personal Property is not sufficiently described by the term "moveables," for certain estates in land are personal pro perty, and are comprehended under the term Chattels Real. [Caarricts.] Terms for years are an example of chattels real ; and they pass together with the rest of a man's personal estate to the executor, the universal successor. Chattels Personal are all other personal property, and are said by Blackstone "to be properly and strictly speaking things moveable, which may be annexed to or attendant on the person of the owner, and carried about with him from one part of the world to another. Such are animals, household stuff, money, jewels, coin, garments, and everything else that can properly be put in motion, and transferred from place to place." Personal property as thus de fined corresponds to the mobilia or res mobiles of the Roman law ; but this is a very inadequate description of personal property as recognised by the English law. And herein we first perceive the greater certainty and distinctness of the law relating to real property compared with the law relating to chattels ; the things which can be the objects of real property are definable, as well as the estates that can be had in them; the things that can be the objects of personal property are hardly determinable, and the estates, or more properly the interests, which a man may have in them, arc perhaps also less determinate. As ex amples of objects of personal property, which in no way come within Black stone's description, we may instance pa tent-rights and copyrights, which are things incorporeal, though not heredita ments, and are the objects of property in a sense.
A quantity of stock in the public funds is not money, though often talked of as such, but still it is property in a sense for it is a legal right to a perpetual an nuity paid by the State, and it is a thing that can be bought and sold. Even debti due to a testator or intestate are con sidered as property with respect to probate and letters of administration ; still they are not expressed by the term goods and chattels in the letters of administration, but by the term "credits," for as debts are not the property of a man to whom they are due, until he gets them, so they cannot become property simply because he happens to die.
The system of the English law as to the nature of property is peculiar, and the modes in which it can be acquired and transferred are also in many respects pe culiar, especially in the case of Real Estate. The discussion of these matters properly belongs to legal treatises.
Property in Chattels may, like property in Things Real, vary as to quantity and quality of interest, though things personal are not capable of such extended and various modifications, analogous to estates, as things real are. As to quantity, that is, duration, a man may have the use of a personal thing for life, and another may have the absolute property in it after his death. As to quality, persons may own a thing personal as joint tenants and as tenants in common. There is an equi table property in chattels as well as in things real. Money, for instance, is often paid to a trustee, in order that he may give the interest of it to one person for life, and after his death pay the money to another. The trustee, so long as he holds the money, has the legal property in the money, and in the thing in which the money is invested. A legatee has only an equitable interest, even in a spe cific legacy, after his testator's will is proved, until the executor gives the thing to him, or in some clear way ad mits his right to it.
Property in a thing must not be con founded with a faculty or power to dis pose of the thing in certain ways. A man may have a power to do a certain act with reference to property, without having any property in the thing; or he may have a property in the thing of a limited quantity, and also a power to dispose of the thing in a certain way. Thus a tenant for life, who has only a limited property in land, may have a power given to him to make leases, subject to certain conditions, of the pro perty of which he is tenant for life.