The standard classification for examinations runs as follows:
(a) Perfect and Imperfect Rights
A perfect right is one which is not only recognized by law but is enforceable — the duty-bearer can be compelled, and the right is protected not only by preventing violation but by compensating it after breach. An imperfect right is recognized but not enforceable — the classic example is a time-barred debt: the creditor can still claim morally (and if the debtor voluntarily pays, the payment is valid and cannot be recovered back), but no court will assist. Nepal's Limitation Act follows the same logic: after the limitation period expires, the claim survives as a natural obligation but not as a legal one.
(b) Rights in rem and Rights in personam
• A right in rem (Latin: against the thing/the world) is available against the world at large — ownership, possession. It binds "all the world."
• A right in personam (against a person) binds only a specific person or persons — the right of a creditor against a debtor, a buyer's right against a seller.
This distinction is the backbone of property law. If Kanchha's land is trespassed upon by anyone, his ownership right in rem protects him; but if he has sold the land to Sita under an unregistered agreement, his right to compel registration exists only against Sita — an in personam right.
(c) Proprietary and Personal Rights
Proprietary rights have economic or monetary value — ownership of a house, a debt, copyright. Personal rights are connected with a person's status and well-being and have no pecuniary value as such — the right to reputation, to bodily security, to privacy. Proprietary rights survive their holder's death (they pass to heirs); purely personal rights generally die with the person.
(d) Rights in re propria and Rights in re aliena
A right in re propria is a right over one's own property — the full ownership right. A right in realiena is a right over another's property — easements, mortgages, leases, liens. The law of Property Law (your Semester 3 course) is largely the law of rights in re aliena carved out of ownership.
(e) Principal and Accessory Rights
A principal right exists independently; an accessory right exists only as an appendage to a principal right. A mortgagee's right of foreclosure is accessory to the principal right of repayment; a landlord's right to rent is principal, the right to evict for non-payment is accessory.
(f) Vested and Contingent Rights
A vested right has accrued and is complete except for enforcement; a contingent right depends on the happening of an uncertain future event — an unborn heir's prospective inheritance, a policy moneys claim contingent on the insured's death. Nepal's succession law illustrates the point: the child en ventre sa mère (in the mother's womb) acquires a contingent inheritance that vests only on being born alive.
(g) Legal and Equitable Rights
Historically an English distinction: legal rights were enforced in common law courts, equitablerights in the Court of Chancery, which followed conscience — the beneficiary's right under a trust being the classic equitable right, enforceable not against the world but against the trustee personally. When the two systems merged, the distinction survived as one of form and priority. The trust concept (recognised in Nepal's Civil Code 2074 as the trust, "Guthi" institutions being a domestic cousin) shows equitable thinking: the trustee holds the legal title, the beneficiary holds the beneficial (equitable) interest — one piece of property, two parallel rights.
(h) Positive and Negative Rights
A positive right entitles the holder to have something done by the duty-bearer (a debtor must pay); a negative right entitles the holder to have something not done (others must not trespass on my land). Most rights in rem are negative; most contractual rights are positive.
Memory aid — "P-I-P-R-P-V-L-P-N": Perfect–Imperfect, In rem–In personam, Proprietary– Personal, Re propria–Re aliena, Principal–Accessory, Vested–Contingent, Legal–Equitable, Positive– Negative.