Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index 1. Property or other legal entitlements inherited from (or through) one's father, especially if it has been handed down through generations in the same family. 2. In civil law systems the sum total of all personal and real entitlements, including movable and immovable property, belonging to a real person or a moral person. Similar to the common law concept of one's estate, though applied differently. All persons have a patrimony. Patrimonies may also exist independent of persons such as the patrimony of affectation, similar but substantially different from the common law trust or the patrimony of a foundation when it is a social trust. See also family patrimony. This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.