INCORPOREAL PROPERTY, civil law. That which consists in legal right merely; or, as the term is, in the common law, of choses in actions. Vide Corporeal property.

TO INCULPATE. To accuse one of a crime or misdemeanor.

INCUMBENT, eccles. law. A clerk resident on his benefice with cure; he is so called because he does, or ought to, bend the whole of his studies to his duties. In common parlance, it signifies one who is in the possession of an office, as, the present incumbent.

INCUMBRANCE. Whatever is a lien upon an estate.

2. The right of a third person in the land in question to the diminution of the value of the land, though consistent with the passing of the fee by the deed of conveyance, is an incumbrance; as, a public highway over the land. 1 Appl. R. 313; 2 Mass. 97; 10 Conn. 431. A private right of way. 15 Pick. 68; 5 Conn. 497. A claim of dower. 22 Pick. 477; 2 Greenl. 22. Alien by judgment or mortgage. 5 Greenl. 94; 15 Verm. 683. Or any outstanding, elder, and better title, will be considered as incumbrances, although in strictness some of them are rather estates than incumbrances. 4 Mass. 630; 2 Greenl. 22; 22 Pick. 447; 5 Conn. 497; 8 Pick. 346; 15 Pick. 68; 13 John. 105; 5 Greenl. 94; 2 N. H. Rep. 458; 11 S. & R. 109; 4 Halst. 139; 7 Halst. 261; Verm. 676; 2 Greenl. Ev. 242.

3. In cases of sales of real estate, the vendor is required to disclose the incumbrances, and to deliver to the purchaser the instruments by which they were created, or on which the defects arise; and the neglect of this will be considered as a fraud. Sugd. Vend, 6; 1 Ves. 96; and see 6 Ves. jr. 193; 10 Ves. jr. 470; 1 Sch. & Lef. 227; 7 Serg. & Rawle, 73.

4. Whether the tenant for life, or the remainder-man, is to keep. down the interest on incumbrances, see Turn. R. 174; 3 Mer. R. 566; 6 Ves. 99; 4 Ves. 24. See, generally, 14 Vin. Ab. 352; Com. Dig. Chancery, 4 A 10, 4 I. 3; 9 Watts, R. 162.

INDEBITATUS ASSUMPSIT, remedies, pleadings. That species of action of assumpsit, in which the plaintiff alleges in his declaration, first a debt, and then a promise in consideration of the debt, that the defendant, being indebted, he promised the plaintiff to pay him. The promise so laid is, generally, an implied one only. Vide 1 Chit. Pl. 334; Steph. Pl. 318; Yelv. 21; 4 Co. 92 b. For the history of this form of action, see 3 Reeves' Hist. Com. Law; 2 Comyn on Contr. 549 to 556; 1 H. Bl. 550, 551; 3 Black Com. 154; Yelv. 70. Vide Pactum Constituae Pecuniae.