Estate (law)
value of a person's assets minus their liabilities
In common law, an estate is a living or deceased person's net worth. It is the sum of a person's assets; their legal rights, interests, and entitlements to property of any kind, minus all of their liabilities at a given time. The issue is of special legal significance on a question of bankruptcy and death of the person. (See inheritance.)
Depending on the particular context, the term is also used in reference to an estate in land or of a particular kind of property (such as real estate or personal estate). The term is also used to refer to the sum of a person's assets only.
The equivalent in civil law legal systems is patrimony.
Bankruptcy
Under United States bankruptcy law, a person's estate consists of all assets or property of any kind available for distribution to creditors. However, some assets are recognized as exempt to allow a person significant resources to restart their financial life. In the United States, asset exemptions depend on various factors, including state and federal law. The estate (or assets) of a bankrupt person is administered by a trustee in bankruptcy.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Estate (law)” as value of a person's assets minus their liabilities. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2186896. The Library of Congress control number is sh85044941. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Estate (law)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.