Also known as: meuble · movables · biens meubles
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
Tangible personal property or chattels. The classification of a thing as a meuble determines whether choice-of-law rules for movables or immovables govern interests in the thing.
Praxis Leasing leased semi-trailers titled in State K to Horizon Freight. The trailers were stored and operated from a hub in State L where creditors held judgments. When creditors sought to levy, the court weighed contacts across States J, K, and L to identify the state with the most significant relationship to the trailers and the parties.
Atlas Capital held secured interests in artwork and precious metals stored in a State B vault. After the storage company entered receivership, local creditors challenged priority. The court applied the law of the state with the most significant relationship to the collateral and the parties rather than automatically selecting the location or a party's domicile.
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A decedent domiciled in Louisiana left movables to children born outside marriage. The court applied Louisiana rules limiting such donations of movables to the amount necessary for sustenance, treating the classification of the assets as meubles as dispositive of the transfer's validity.
A man domiciled in China with two wives died in California leaving movable property there. The court recognized the marriages under Chinese law and applied the law of the decedent's domicile to distribute the movables, treating the assets as meubles governed by domicile-based succession rules.
Classification as a meuble directs the forum to the local law of the state with the most significant relationship to the thing and the parties under the principles of section 6, without incorporating that state's choice-of-law rules in most transfer disputes between the parties.
The reference becomes the full law when the issue involves the effect of a transfer on third parties or succession to interests in movables, requiring the forum to reach the same result a court of the selected state would reach.
Parties enter property transactions with forethought and often consult counsel, so their expectations of legal consequences deserve protection absent strong countervailing considerations.
The factors include the policies of interested states, the parties' justified expectations, certainty and predictability of result, implementation of basic property policies, and needs of judicial administration.
…others in loss of liberty by perpetual or temporary imprisonment. Some extend to confiscation by forfeiture of lands or movables, or both, or of the profits of lands for life; others induce a disability of holding offices or employments, being heirs, executors, and the like."[^maj-3] In France, deprivation or…