Estate I INTRODUCTION Estate, in law, the degree of interest or ownership that a person has in property. The term estate is also used in a more general sense to denote the whole property possessed by an individual, for example, the estate of a deceased person. Sometimes debts are also included in this wide meaning, with all rights and duties regarded as a single entity. Estate in this sense of “the total belongings of a person” is divided into realty, or real estate, and personal estate. II DERIVATION The term estate, in the sense of interest that a person has in property, applies especially but not exclusively to realty. Much of the law of realty in the United Kingdom and the United States stems from the feudal institutions developed in England after the Norman Conquest (1066). The basic premise of feudalism was that the monarch enjoyed ultimate power over all the land in the realm. From the monarch, the lawful occupants and users of land had tenure, the right to occupancy and use, ei...