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Escheat is a legal path, not a feeling. When someone dies with no valid will, and nobody else has a legal right to the money or the land, those things do not float in the air: they pass to the state. That passing is escheat. The word is old and courtroom-stiff; you will not hear it at the night market. In older English law it also meant land ‘falling back’ to a lord when a tenant died with no heir — the property was said to fall, which is how the word was born. Though actually, in real life a relative almost always appears, so full escheat is less common than stories about forgotten fortunes make it look. It is not the state stealing, and it is not a tax; it is a last-resort rule for property that would otherwise belong to no one. Lawyers also use it as a verb: the property escheats to the state.
無人繼承財產歸公
組成From Middle English, from old French escheoir ‘to fall’ — the property ‘falls’ to the state. Behind that: Latin ex- (away) + cadere (to fall). The same old French word later gave English cheat.
同家族的字
- cheatan old twin: both started as the French word for something that ‘falls’ to you; cheat later took on the ‘trick someone’ meaning
原始詞典資料6 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
escheatnoun/ɪsˈt͡ʃiːt/
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lawThe return, conversion, or vesting of property of a deceased person or closed business to the government (originally to a feudal lord) where there are no legal heirs or claimants. It is known as bona vacantia in the United Kingdom.
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lawThe property so reverted.
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obsoletePlunder, booty.
- 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.
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That which falls to one; a reversion or return.
- And by my ruines thinkes to make them great: / To make one great by others losse, is bad excheat
escheatverb/ɪsˈt͡ʃiːt/
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To put (land, property) in escheat; to confiscate.
- Arms are very rigidly controlled in Scotland by the Lord Lyon King of Arms. […] Under an Act of 1592, Lyon King of Arms can escheat to the Sovereign all goods unlawfully displaying arms.
- Failure to perform duties opened the culprit to charges of ‘felony’ (felonia), providing grounds for the king to escheat the fief.
- 2
To revert, convert, or vest ownership to the government or lord because its previous owner died without an heir or a business closed and no one claims the assets.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。