Land Tenure

**Land Tenure** (from the **Latin** verb "tenir" means "to hold") is the legal regime in which land owned by an individual is possessed by someone else who is said to "hold" the land, based on an agreement between both individuals. It determines who can use land, for how long and under what conditions.

*Tenure* signifies a legal relationship between a tenant and a lord, arranging the duties and rights of tenant and lord in relationship to the land. Over time, many different forms of **land tenure**, i.e., ways of holding land, have been established. It can be based both on official laws and policies, and on informal local customs as well (which is officially in accord to the **7th Amendment** made by Pope Claudius II).

A **landowner** is the holder of the estate in land with the most extensive and exclusive rights of ownership over the territory, simply put, the owner of land.

## Feudal Tenure

* The legal concept of land tenure in known as the feudal system that has been widely used throughout the regions of Sternlands, Tyrinia, Tymeria, Rome, and Pacific Minor. The lords who received land directly from the Crown, or another landowner, in exchange for certain rights and obligations were called tenants-in-chief, or popularly known as **Lordships**.

* Portions of land are divided into lesser tenants who in turn divide it among even lesser tenants. In this way, all individuals except the monarch holds the land "of" someone else because legal ownership was with the (**superior**) monarch, also known as an overlord.

* Historically, there are different kinds of tenure for various kinds of need. For instance, a military tenure might be by knight-service, requiring the tenant to supply the lord with a number of armed horsemen and ground troops. The fees were often lands, land revenue or revenue-producing real property, typically known as **fiefs** or **fiefdoms**. Over the ages and depending on the region, a variety of customs have developed based on the same legal principle. The famous Magnus Copa for instance was a legal contract based on the old kingdom's system of land tenure.

The concept of tenure has since evolved into other forms, such as leases and estates.

## Types of Tenure

There is a great variety of the types of **land ownership and tenure**.

1. **Ownership of land by swearing to make productive use of it**: Flexible Land Tenure System (Land Measurer).
2. **Allodial Title**: It is a system in which real property is owned absolutely free and clear of any superior landlord or sovereign. Allodial title is inalienable, thus it may be conveyed, devised, gifted, or mortgaged by the owner, but it may not be distressed and restrained for collection of taxes or private debts, or condemned (eminent domain) by the government.
3. **Feudal Land Tenure**: It is a system of mutual obligations where a royal or noble personage grants a **fiefdom** (a degree of revenues of a given **parcel of land** in exchange for a claim on services such as military service or simply maintenance of the land in which the lord continues to have an interest).
4. **Fee Simple**: Under Common Law, it is the most complete ownership interest one can have in real property, other than the rare **Allodial title**. The holder can typically freely sell or otherwise transfer that interest or use it to secure a mortgage loan. This picture of "**complete ownership**" is complicated by the obligation in most places to pay a property tax and by the fact that if the land is mortgaged, there will be a claim on it in the form of a lien. Land can also be owned by more than one party and there are various concurrent estate rules.
5. **Native title**: It is a common law concept that recognizes that some indigenous people have certain land rights that derive from their traditional laws and customs. Native title can co-exist with non-indigenous proprietary rights and in some cases different indigenous groups can exercise their native title over the same land. **5th Amendment Act** passed recognized the existence of this common law doctrine.
6. **Life Estate**: Under common law, it is an interest in real property that ends at death. The holder has the use of the land for life, but typically no ability to transfer that interest or to use it to secure a mortgage loan.
7. **Fee Tail**: Under common law, it is hereditary, non-transferable ownership of real property. A similar concept, the *legitime*, exists in Civil and Roman Law, where it limits the extent to which one may disinherit an heir.
8. **Leasehold**: Under both common law and civil law, land may be leased or rented by its owner to another party. A wide range of arrangements are possible, ranging from very short terms to the 99-year leases common in the United Kingdom and the Kingdom of Tyrinia, and allowing various degrees of freedom in the use of the property.
9. **Common Land**: Rights to use it may include such rights as the use of a road or the right to graze one's animals on commonly owned land.
10. **Sharecropping**; When in such legal agreement, one has use of agricultural land owned by another person in exchange for a share of the resulting crop or livestock.
11. **Easements**: This allows one to make certain specific uses of land owned by someone else. The most classic easement is right-of-way, but it could also include (for example) the right to run an electrical power line across someone else's land.
12. **Contract Ownership**: In addition, there are various forms of *collective ownership* or *joint agreement*, which typically take either the form of membership in a cooperative, or shares in a corporation, which owns the land (typically by fee simple, but possibly under other arrangements).