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. Disseisin may be effected either in corporeal inheritances, or incorporeal. Disseisin of things corporcal, as of houses, lands, 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.
Law Dictionary – Alternative Legal Definition
Dispossession; a deprivation of possession; a privation of seisin; a usurpation of the right of seisin and possession, and an exercise of such powers and privileges of ownership as to keep out or displace him to whom these rightfully belong. It is a wrongful putting out of him that is seised of the freehold, not, as in abatement or intrusion, a wrongful entry, where the possession was vacant, but an attack upon him who is in actual possession, and turning him out. It is an ouster from a freehold in deed, as abatement and Intrusion are ousters in law. 3 Steph. Comm. 386. When one man invades the possession of another, and by force or surprise turns him out of the occupation of his lands, this is termed a “disseisin,” being a deprivation of that actual seisin or corporal possession of the freehold which the tenant Defore enjoyed. In other words, a disseisin is said to be when one enters intending to usurp the possession, and to oust another from the freehold. To constitute an entry a disseisin, there must be an ouster of the freehold, either by taking the profits or by claiming the inheritance. Brown. According to the modern authorities, there seems to be no legal difference between the words “seisin” and “possession,” although there is a difference between the words “disseisin” and “dispossession;” the former meaning an estate gained by wrong and injury, whereas the latter may be by right or by wrong; the former denoting an ouster of the disseisee, or some act equivalent to it, whereas by the latter no such act is implied. Slater v. Rawson, 6 Mete. (Mass.) 439. Equitable disseisin is where a person is wrongfully deprived of the equitable seisin of land, e. p., of the rents and profits. 2 Merlv. 171; 2 Jac. A W. 166.
Disseisin by election is where a person alleges or admits himself to be disseised when he has not really been so.
Disseisinam satis facit, qui uti non permittit possessorem, vel minus commode, licet omnino non expellat. Co. Litt 881. He makes disseisin enough who does not permit the possessor to enjoy, or makes his enjoyment less beneficial, although he does not expel him altogether.