Legal Term: DISSEISIN

Definition: torts. The privation of seisin. It takes the seisin or estate from one man and places it in another. It is an ouster of the rightful owner from the seisinor estate in the land, and the coinmencement of a new estate in the wrong doer. It may be by abatement, intrusion, discontinuance, or deforcement, as well as by disseisin, properly so called. Every dispossession is not a disseisin. A disseisin, properly so called, requires an ouster of the freehold. A disseisin at election is not a disseisin in fact, 2 Prest. Abs. tit. 279, et seq., but by admission only of the injured party, for the purpose of trying his right in a real action. Co. Litt. 277, 3 Greenl. 316, 4 N. H. Rep. 371, 5 Cowen, 371, 6 John. 197, 2 Fairf. 309, 2 Greenl. 242, 5 Pet. 402, 6 Pick. 172. 2. Disseisin may be effected either in corporeal inheritances, or incorporeal. Disseisin of things corporcal, as of houses, lands, &c., must be by entry and actual dispossession of the freehold, as if a man enters, by force or fraud, into the house of another, and turns, or at least, keeps him or his servants out of possession. Disseisin of incorporeal hereditaments cannot be an actual dispossession, for the subject itself is neither capable of actual bodily possession nor dispossession. 3 B1. Com. 169, 170. See 15 Mass. 495 6 John. R. 197, 2 Watts, 23, 6 Pick. 172 1 Verm. 155, 11 Pet. R. 41, 10 Pet. R. 414, 14 Pick. 374, 1 Danas R. 279, 2 Fairf. 408, 11 Pick. 193, 8 Pick. 172, 8 Vin. Ab. 79, 1 Swifts Dig. 504, 1 Cruise, *65, Arch. Civ. Pl. 12, Bac. Ab. h. t., 2 Supp. to Ves. Jr. 343, Danes Ab. Index, h. t., 1 Chit. Pr. 374, note (r.)

Return to the Legalnut.com Law Dictionary