ENTRY, RIGHT OF. In the common law, the right to consummate an inchoate or incomplete title to land by taking possession thereof. This right is in legal theory coextensive with the right of possession, hut it carries with it the implication that such possession is wrongfully withheld or, at least, that it has not been trans ferred to and assumed by the person entitled.
The right arises under three principal sets of circumstances: (a) Where an estate has passed by descent, or a lease for years has been made to a person nut in possession. In such ease the common law requires the heir or the lessee to enter upon the land in order to invest himself completely with the estate to which he has thus become entitled. (b) When lands are unlawfully with held under a claim of freehold, from a person entitled thereto, as by a disseisin or adverse possession. The rightful owner may at common law, by an actual reentry upon the lands, restore his title and thus prevent the adverse possession from ripening into a title. (c) Where lands have been eonveyed upon a condition and the condition has been broken. Ilere the estate re mains unaffected until the grantor or his heir exercises his right of entry, whereupon the estate of the grantee is ipso facto determined and the grantor "is in of his old estate." The peculiar nature of the right of entry as a legal right appears from this enumeration of cases to which it is applicable. Though having to do with real estate, it is not itself an estate or interest in lands, nor, indeed, any species of property whatsoever, either corporeal or incor poreal ; and though it will usually descend to the heir of the person entitled to it, it is in most eases incapable of assignment or transfer either by deed or will. On the other hand, it is
not a mere right of action, which could not, by any magic, be transmuted, like the right of entry, into a substantial estate.
Originally a right of entry might be exercised by force, if necessary, but by an early English statute (5 Rich. II., st. 1, c. 8) it was provided that this remedy must be pursued "in a peace able and easy manner, and not with force or strong hand"; and since that date an entry, if opposed, can be made only by legal process. (See FORCIBLE ENTRY.) The usual method pro vided is a summary proceeding instituted by writ of entry, under which, if it be defended. the right, to the possession of the property in dispute can be tried and legally determined. In some of the United States this procedure must be followed in every ease, even where the entry of the claimant is not disputed, but in others the common-law remedy is still available. A right of entry is extinguished by an open and notorious possession of the premises for the period prescribed by the statute of limitations, which, in the United States, is usually twenty years. See ADVERSE POSSESSION; CONDITION: DESCENT CAST; DLSSEISIN; LIMITATION.