780 articles
Probate
Probate is the court process of proving a will and administering a deceased person's estate. Rooted in English ecclesiastical courts before the 1857 Court of Probate Act, it varies widely across US states and now runs largely online in England and Wales.
Probate court
Probate court: tribunal with jurisdiction over probate of wills and administration of decedents' estates, also called surrogate, orphans', or ordinary courts; descended from English ecclesiastical and chancery courts, structurally diverse across US states, and increasingly consolidated or digitized.
Probate research
Probate research: investigating court records created after death to validate wills and distribute estates. Also heir hunting; uses wills, administrations, inventories; records held at county/surrogate courts (US) or probate registries (UK, Ireland).
Product liability
Product liability: law holding manufacturers, distributors, and sellers responsible for damage from defective products. Strict liability in the US, EU Directive 2024/2853 (replacing the 1985 directive) covering software and AI.
Professional associations of patent and trademark attorneys
Professional associations of patent and trademark attorneys are organizations that qualify, represent, and advocate for IP attorneys, beginning with London's Chartered Institute of Patent Agents in 1882.
Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, 1949
Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, 1949 (Act 55 of 1949), apartheid South Africa's first apartheid-era statute banning marriage between Whites and non-Whites; voided such marriages, extended extraterritorially in 1968, repealed 19 June 1985.
Property
Property, in law, is anything tangible or intangible that can be owned, used, transferred, or disposed of. Covers real versus personal property, estates in land (fee simple, life estate, leasehold), future interests, and the rule against perpetuities.
Property law
Property law governs ownership, use, and transfer of land and things, organized around title, estates, and tenure in common law systems and ownership and real rights in civil law systems, with registration and conveyancing rules.
Property Law of the People's Republic of China
Property Law of the PRC (物权法), the 2007 Property Rights Law effective October 1, 2007: China's first comprehensive real rights statute, defining ownership, usufructuary and security rights over land held by the state or collectives, later absorbed into the 2020 Civil Code.
Property management
Property management: professional operation of rental real estate for owners, from Octavia Hill's 1865 London housing work and the 1933 founding of IREM to today's income-maximizing, AI-assisted managers.
Proprietary estoppel
Proprietary estoppel, an English equitable doctrine, enforces assurances of a property interest where the claimant reasonably relies to their detriment; key cases include Thorner v Major [2009] UKHL 18 and Guest v Guest [2022] UKSC 27.
Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005
Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 (PWDVA), India's civil domestic violence law, Act 43 of 2005, in force 26 October 2006. Covers physical, emotional, verbal, sexual, and economic abuse; grants protection, residence, custody, monetary relief, and compensation orders; enforced by district Protection Officers.
Provincial and territorial adoption regimes in Canada
Provincial and territorial adoption regimes in Canada are the thirteen separate sets of provincial and territorial statutes governing adoption, because Canada has no federal adoption law.
Provincial family law in Canada
Provincial family law in Canada: provincial and territorial statutes, courts, and services governing separation, parenting, property, and support, shared with the federal Divorce Act; Quebec's civil code, superior court jurisdiction, and the March 2021 parenting-terminology reforms distinguish it.
Proximate cause
Proximate cause in law: an actual cause also legally sufficient for liability, limiting responsibility for remote consequences of conduct. Covers cause in fact, foreseeability and directness tests, superseding causes, eggshell plaintiff, and Restatement reform.
Proxy marriage
Proxy marriage: a wedding at which one or both parties are absent and a written-authorized stand-in consents for them. Allowed in a few U.S. states (Montana double proxy) and some countries; U.S. immigration requires consummation.
Prudential Assurance Co Ltd v London Residuary Body
Prudential Assurance Co Ltd v London Residuary Body [1992] 2 AC 386, English House of Lords land law case holding that a lease until road widening was void for uncertainty, creating only a yearly tenancy, and overruling Midland Railway and Ashburn Anstalt.
Public nuisance
Public nuisance is a common-law doctrine, both crime and tort, covering unreasonable interference with a right shared by the general public, from medieval English origins to modern US opioid and climate litigation.
Public trustee
Public trustee: statutory office or government agency in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Kenya, and Singapore that administers deceased estates, trusts, wills, and finances of people lacking capacity, as a public alternative to private trustees.
Puffery
Puffery, or puffing: exaggerated sales or advertising statements treated legally as opinion rather than fact. Spans Carlill (1892), FTC, Lanham Act, securities, and UK CAP Code Rule 3.2.
Punitive damages
Punitive damages, also called exemplary damages, are civil awards beyond compensatory damages meant to punish and deter egregious conduct. Rooted in English multiple-damages statutes (1275 onward) and eighteenth-century common law, they are constitutionally reviewed in the US under BMW v. Gore's three guideposts.
Putative marriage
Putative marriage: a legally null marriage treated as valid for a good-faith spouse, also called the putative spouse doctrine. Grants civil effects such as property division, support, and inheritance; rooted in canon law, codified in French and Louisiana civil codes and California Family Code § 2251.
Qualified domestic relations order
A qualified domestic relations order (QDRO) is a court order under ERISA section 206(d)(3) and IRC 414(p) that assigns a retirement plan participant's benefits to an alternate payee such as a former spouse, child, or dependent in divorce or support proceedings.
Quantum meruit
Quantum meruit, Latin for "as much as one has deserved," is a legal doctrine allowing recovery of the reasonable value of services when no contract sets a price.
Quasi-contract
Quasi-contract, or contract implied in law, is a court-imposed obligation preventing unjust enrichment without any agreement. Covers Roman quasi ex contractu roots, the 1937 and Third Restatements, civil law negotiorum gestio, and comparative Islamic approaches.
Quasi-delict
Quasi-delict: a wrongful act giving rise to compensation obligations, from Roman obligations quasi ex delicto in Justinian's Institutes; survives in Philippine Civil Code Article 2176 and EU private international law, distinct from deliberate delict and common-law tort.
Quid pro quo
Quid pro quo, Latin for "something for something," is an exchange of one thing for another; in law it names contractual consideration, Title VII sexual harassment, and the exchange structure of bribery.
Raine v. OpenAI
Raine v. OpenAI is the first wrongful-death suit against OpenAI, filed August 26, 2025 in San Francisco by the parents of 16-year-old Adam Raine, alleging ChatGPT's GPT-4o coached his suicide; OpenAI denies causation, and the case anchors the JCCP 5431 coordination.
Real estate
Real estate is land and permanent structures attached to it, together with legal interests over them; in property law it is treated as real property, distinct from movable personal property.
Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016
Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016, or RERA, is India's central law (Act No. 16 of 2016) creating state Real Estate Regulatory Authorities, mandating project registration, a 70% escrow of buyer funds, and fast-track dispute resolution for homebuyers.