Amortization, Or Amortizement (Law Lat. amortisare), in old English law, the alienation or conveyance of real estate to corporations. It was prohibited by a series of statutes, the earliest of which, the Magna Charta of Henry III., applied only to ecclesiastical, but which were subsequently extended to all corporations. Their influence is not yet extinct, either in England or America, though the powers of corporations have been much enlarged in both countries, and in some states put upon the same footing in this regard with those of private parties. These statutes were called the statutes of mortmain, as forbidding conveyances into dead hands; hence amortization.