Legal Definitions - apportionment

Definition: The act of dividing something into proportionate shares, such as rights, liabilities, or expenses, between two or more people or entities. It can also refer to the distribution of legislative seats among districts based on population.

• When a group of friends rent a vacation home, they may use appportionment to divide the cost of the rental and other expenses equally among all the participants.
• In tax law, appportionment can be used to allocate profits to a specific tax year or to attribute the use of a personal asset to a business.
• The allocation of congressional representatives among states based on population is an example of legislative appportionment.
• When a person dies and leaves an estate, the estate-tax liability may be divided among the beneficiaries according to the testator's instructions or by statute.

These examples illustrate how appportionment is used to divide something fairly and proportionally among different parties. It can be used in various contexts, such as sharing expenses, allocating profits or taxes, or distributing political representation.