What is DWELLING HOUSE? Definition of DWELLING HOUSE in Black's Law Dictionary – Legal dictionary – Glossary of legal terms.
The house in which a man lives with his family; a residence; abode; habitation; the apartment or building, or group of buildings, occupied by a family as a place of residence.
"Dwelling house" is a very flexible term. Its meaning depends not only on context, but on the determination of the courts not to permit public policy or justice to be defeated by a word. "Dwelling house" often means any building within the curtilage. Daniels v. Commonwealth, 172 Va. 583, 1 S.E.2d 333, 335. It may mean a single house used by one family exclusively as a home. It may include an apartment building, or any structure used by human beings, partly for business and partly for residential purposes, or a building regardless of habitation. Gerstell v. Knight, 345 Pa. 83, 26 A.2d 329, 330.
In conveyancing. Includes all buildings attached to or connected with the house. 2 Hil.Real Prop. 338, and note. In the law of burglary. A house in which the occupier and his family usually reside, or, in other words, dwell and lie in. Whart. Crim.Law, 357. Temporary absence will not destroy character as "dwelling house." Haynes v. State, 180 Miss. 291, 177 So. 360; State v. Bair, 112 W.Va. 655, 166 S.E. 369, 370, 85 A.L.R. 424.
Private Dwelling, within a restrictive covenant, a place or house in which a person or family lives in an individual or private state, the covenant being violated by the conversion of a house theretofore used as a residence for a single family into a residence for two families, even though the outward appearance of the house was not materially affected. Paine v. Bergrose Development Corp., 198 N.Y.S. 311, 312, 119 Misc. 796. The distinction between a boarding house and a "private dwelling house" is whether the house is occupied as a home for the occupant and his wife and child, or whether he occupied it as a place for carrying on the business of keeping boarders, although while prosecuting the business and as a means of prosecuting it, he and his wife and children live in the house also. Trainor v. Le Beck, 101 N.J.Eq. 823, 139 A. 16, 17.
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