In what circumstances will a person be deemed to have a personal estate in his name?

In Horsfield v. Ashton (1856), 2 Jur. N.S. 153, at p. 195, Lord Cranworth said: “For though the book debts, money and capital in the trade could not be properly described as personal estate situate at Hyde or Werneth, (for property of this description has in strictness no locality), yet the question is in what sense the testator used these words?”

In the case Re Prater Designe v. Beare, 37 Ch. D. 481, at p. 486, Cotton, L.J., said: “There are cases where a gift of property in a particular locality has been held to include debts due from persons in that locality. I think these latter cases go upon this—that there was in the wills a sufficient indication of intention to include under the description of property in a particular place that which really cannot have any locality. Those cases, in my opinion, shew that the rule that choses in action have no locality must not deter us from holding them to be included in a gift of property in a particular locality, if we come to the conclusion that the intention of the testator was so to include them.”