Definition of "escheat"

escheat

/əsˈt͡ʃiːt/

noun
countable and uncountable, plural escheats
1. (law) The return of property of a deceased person to the state (originally to a feudal lord) where there are no legal heirs or claimants.
2. (law) The property so reverted.
3. (obsolete) Plunder, booty.
  Quotations
  Approching, with bold words and bitter threat, / Bad that same boaster, as he mote, on high / To leaue to him that Lady for excheat, / Or bide him battell without further treat.
  1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto VIII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie
4. That which falls to one; a reversion or return.
  Quotations
  And by my ruines thinkes to make them great: / To make one great by others losse, is bad excheat
  1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto V”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, stanza 25
verb
third-person singular simple present escheats, present participle escheating, simple past and past participle escheated
1. (transitive) To put (land, property) in escheat; to confiscate.
  Quotations
  Failure to perform duties opened the culprit to charges of ‘felony’ (felonia), providing grounds for the king to escheat the fief.
  2016, Peter H. Wilson, The Holy Roman Empire, Penguin, published 2017, page 329
2. (intransitive) To revert to a state or lord because its previous owner died without an heir.