UNITY - An agreement or coincidence of
certain qualities in the title of a joint estate or an
estate in common.
In a joint estate there must exist four unities; that
of interest, for a joint-tenant cannot be entitled to
one period of duration or quantity of interest in lands,
and the other to a different; one cannot be tenant for
life, and the other for years: that of title, and therefore
their estate must be created by one and, the same act;
that of time, for their estates must be vested at one
and the same period, as well as by one and the same
title; and lastly, the unity of possession: hence joint-tenants
are seised per my et per tout, or by the half or moiety
and by all: that is, each of them has an entire possession,
as well of every parcel as of the whole.
Coparceners must have the unities of interest, title,
and possession.
In tenancies-in-common, the unity of possession is
alone required.
UNITY OF POSSESSION - This term is
used to designate the possession by one person of several
estates or rights. For example, a right to an estate
to which an easement is attached, or the dominant estate,
and to an estate which an easement encumbers, or the
servient estate, in such case the easement is extinguished.
But a distinction has been made between a thing that
has being by prescription, and one that has its being
ex jure naturae; in the former case unity of possession
will extinguish the easement; in the latter, for example,
the case of a water course, the unity will not extinguish
it.
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