Zubehör

The German concept of accessory chattel does not fit neatly into common law concepts of fixture or appurtenance. A fixture is personal property that becomes real property because it is attached to and incorporated into the real property (more akin to the German concept of "wesentliche Bestandteil"), while appurtenance is a much broader concept that encompasses both fixtures and other property rights such as easements, land improvements, etc. The accessory chattel relates to principal property that can be either real property or personal property and that must have a supportive of an economic purpose, which neither a fixture or appurtenance requires. Since the purpose and scope of these concepts are different and they share only the same effect (the personal property becoming part of the primary property in the event of a sale or some other lease), we would classify this legal term as functionally non-equivalent and therefore worthy of its own descriptive neologism.