What are Estovers in real estate?

Are you not sure what Estovers is and you have to know it for the North Carolina Real Estate exam? In order to understand Estovers then it would be important to also understand what a Life Estate and a life tenant are. Let us start by knowing the definition and an example of life Estate and life tenant.


The legal definition of a Life estate is:“ An interest in real or personal property that is limited in duration to the lifetime of its owner or some other designated person and persons.”


Then the legal definition of life tenant is:” A person in possession of a life estate.”


An example of this would be a mother with kids who own a house. The mother has a boyfriend that lives with them but he does not own the house. The mother unexpectedly passes away and the boyfriend is allowed to live in the house until he passes away. The kids own the house but he is still able to live in it until he passes away. Once the boyfriend passes away then the ownership of the house will go back to the kids. In this situation, the kids would be the owners of the life estate and the boyfriend would be a life tenant.


Now has does Estovers play into all this? It is important to understand the legal definition first.


The legal definition of Estovers is:”A necessity allowed by law; for example, the right of a life tenant to use some of the property’s resources to provide for needed repairs.”


An example of this would be if the boyfriend needed wood off the property to either repair the house or heat the house. Since he is the life tenant then Estovers allows him to use resources on the property for necessities. The boyfriend may only use the resources for necessities and if he does not use them for that purpose then it will be known as Waste. This means that the boyfriend uses the resources for a profit.