Estates in land may be classified according to (1) the quantity of their interest or duration, (2) the time of enjoyment, and (3) the number and connexion of the tenants. According to (1), an estate may be either a freehold of inheritance or a freehold not of inheritance. A freehold of inheritance may be (_a_) an estate in fee simple, which is the largest estate a man can hold in English law, and comes close to the idea of absolute ownership, repudiated by Williams; an estate in fee simple is inheritable by a man's heirs generally, he has full powers of disposition over it, and may alienate the whole or part. (_b_) It may also be in limited fees, which are again subdivided into (i.) qualified or base fee, (ii.) fee conditional, so called at the common law, afterwards, on the passing of the statute _De Donis Conditionalibus_, fee tail, which may be general as to the heirs of a man's body, or special, as to the heirs _male_ (or _female_) of his body. A freehold not of inheritance may be either (1) conventional, as an estate for life, which may be either an estate for one's own life or for the life of another (_pur autre vie_); (2) legal, or created by operation of law, as tenancy in tail after possibility of issue extinct (i.e. where an estate is given to a man and the heirs of his body by his present wife, and the wife dies without issue, the husband becomes tenant in tail after possibility of issue extinct); tenancy by curtesy (see CURTESY); tenancy in dower (see DOWER). Estates not of freehold or less than freehold are subdivided into (i.) estates for years (often called estates for a term of years, the instrument creating it being termed a _lease_ or demise, and the estate itself a _leasehold interest_); (ii.) estates at will, that is, where lands or tenements are let by one man to another to have and to hold at the will of the lessor; (iii.) estates at sufferance, where one comes into possession of land under a lawful title, and continues in possession after his title has determined. According to (2), estates are either in possession or in expectancy. Estates in expectancy are either (_a_) in remainder, which may be vested or contingent, or (_b_) in reversion (see REMAINDER, REVERSION). According to (3), estates may be either (i.) in severalty, that is, the holding of an estate by a person in his own right only, without any other person being joined or connected with him in point of interest therein; (ii.) estates in joint tenancy (see JOINT); (iii.) coparcenary (q.v.); and (iv.) tenancy in common, where two or more hold the same land, by several and distinct titles, but with unity of possession. (See also REAL PROPERTY.)