escheat

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Pronunciation

• IPA: /əsˈt͡ʃiːt/

Noun

escheat

1. (legal) The return of property of a deceased person to the state (originally to a feudal lord) where there are no legal heirs or claimants.
2. (legal) The property so reverted.
3. (obsolete) Plunder, booty.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III.viii:

     Approching, with bold words and bitter threat, / Bad that same boaster, as he mote, on high / To leaue to him that Lady for excheat, / Or bide him battell without further treat.

4. That which falls to one; a reversion or return.

   • To make me great by others' loss is bad escheat.

Verb

escheat (escheats, present participle escheating; past and past participle escheated)

1. (transitive) To put (land, property) in escheat; to confiscate.
   • 2016, Peter H. Wilson, The Holy Roman Empire, Penguin 2017, p. 329:

     Failure to perform duties opened the culprit to charges of ‘felony’ (felonia), providing grounds for the king to escheat the fief.

2. (intransitive) To revert to a state or lord because its previous owner died without an heir.

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