Inside the wide area of the law of personal property there are two fundamental issues that govern the majority of the transactions made by people in their everyday lives. They are the issues of ownership and possession and how the law recognises them. .
Property means ownership. Ownership is defined as the exclusive right to use, possess, and dispose of property, subject only to the right of the persons having a superior interest and to any restriction on the owner's rights imposed by agreement with or by act of third parties or by operation of law. Ownership may be corporal, which means a material thing that may be movable or immovable, or incorporeal, that means something intangible, such as a copyright or a patent. The owner can change some of these rights, for example the owner of land can grant a right of way. Furthermore, ownership can be held by different persons for different interest. This is the case when an owner of a freehold piece of property or land grants a lease or when land is settled on persons with interests in succession to one another. Finally, more than one person can own the same property at the same time. They may be either joint owners with a single title to the property or owners in common, each having a distinct title in the property that can be disposed of independently. Possession on the other hand is the actual control of property combined with the intention to use it, rightly or wrongly, as one's own. In the case of land possession may be actual when the owner has entered onto the land or possession in law when he has the right to enter but not has yet done so. Possession can also constructive which means that a person may own something but another person may be in temporary possession of this thing. The owner is said to have constructive possession as he can usually take possession back when he desires. Symbolic possession simply means that a person has something which equates with the actual property.
