Escrow is a legal arrangement whereby an asset (often money, but sometimes other property such as art, a deed of title, website, or software source code) is delivered to a third party (called an escrow agent) to be held in trust or otherwise pending a contingency or the fulfillment of a condition or conditions in a contract. Upon that event occurring, the escrow agent will deliver the asset to the proper recipient, otherwise the escrow agent is bound by his or her fiduciary duty to maintain the escrow account. An example of Money. ... // Use of the term In common usage, property means ones own thing and refers to the relationship between individuals and the objects which they see as being their own to dispense with as they see fit. ... Venus de Milo exhibited in the Louvre museum, France. ... A deed is a legal instrument used to grant a right. ... Title is a legal term for an owners interest in a piece of property. ... Website - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ... Computer software (or simply software) refers to one or more computer programs and data held in the storage of a computer for some purpose. ... Source code (commonly just source or code) is any series of statements written in some human-readable computer programming language. ... Agency is an area of law dealing with a contractual or quasi-contractual relationship between at least two parties in which one, the principal, authorizes the other, the agent, to represent her or his legal interests and to perform legal acts that sometimes bind the principal. ... Wiktionary has related dictionary definitions, such as: trust Trust may refer to: Trust (sociology), the willing acceptance of one persons power to affect another Property law Trust law, where ownership and management of property is on behalf of another Escrow, where a thing is held in trust until conditions... A contract is a promise or an agreement that is enforced or recognized by the law. ... The court of chancery, which governed fiduciary relations prior to the Judicature Acts The fiduciary duty is a legal relationship between two or more parties, most commonly a fiduciary or trustee and a principal or beneficiary, that in English common law is arguably the most important concept within the portion...

Not all escrow agreements impose the duties of a legal trustee on the escrow agent, and, in fact, in many such agreements, escrow agents are held to a mere gross negligence standard and benefit from indemnity and hold harmless provisions. Manufacturers are reponsible for adequately warning consumers of possibly dangerous products. ... Indemnity is a legal exemption from the penalties or liabilities incurred by any course of action. ... Indemnification is a promise, usually as a contract provision, protecting one party from financial loss. ...

While escrow is best known in the United States in the context of real estate (specifically in mortgages where the mortgage company will establish an escrow account to pay property tax and insurance during the term of the mortgage), escrow companies are also commonly used in the transfer of high value personal and business property, like websites and businesses, and in relation to person-to-person remote auctions (such as eBay). Introduction A mortgage is a device used to create a lien on real estate by contract. ... eBay Inc. ...

Escrow is also known in the judicial context. So called escrow funds are commonly used to distribute the money after a cash settlement in a class action or environmental enforcement action. This way the defendant is not responsible for the distribution of judgment monies to the individual plaintiffs or the court-determined use (such as environmental remediation or mitigation). Defendant pays the total amount of the judgment (or settlement) to the court-administered or -appointed escrow fund, and the fund distributes the funds (often reimbursing its expenses from such the judgment funds). In law, a class action is an equitable procedural device used in litigation for determining the rights of and remedies, if any, for large numbers of people whose cases involve common questions of law and fact. ... Generally, remediation means giving a remedy. ... Mitigation consists of the activities designed to reduce or eliminate risks to persons or property or to lessen the actual or potential effects or consequences of an incident. ...

In some jurisdictions, real estate brokers are considered to act as escrow agents when they accept deposits or earnest money for the purchase of real property. In many jurisdictions, the duties of such agents are codified. In law, jurisdiction from the Latin jus, juris meaning law and dicere meaning to speak, is the practical authority granted to a formally constituted body or to a person to deal with and make pronouncements on legal matters and, by implication, to administer justice within a defined area of responsibility. ... A real estate broker is in the business of brokering real estate transactions; that is, finding sellers for those who want to buy real estate and finding buyers for those trying to sell real estate. ... Earnest money is a deposit attached to an offer to purchase real estate. ... The factual accuracy of this article is disputed. ... In law, codification is the process of collecting and restating the law of a jurisdiction in certain areas, usually by subject. ...

Source code escrow agents hold source code of software in escrow just as other escrow companies hold cash. The highly valuable (and often secret) source code is only released by the agent to either party upon specific terms of the escrow agreement. Source code escrow means deposit of the source code of the software into an account held by a third party escrow agent. ... Source code (commonly just source or code) is any series of statements written in some human-readable computer programming language. ... Computer software (or simply software) refers to one or more computer programs and data held in the storage of a computer for some purpose. ...

Escrow is also used in the field of Banking Equipment (such as Automatic Teller Machines - ATMs) and is the function which allows the machine to hold the money deposited by the customer separately, and in case he challenges the counting result his money is returned.

See also

• Key escrow used as a "backdoor key" in cryptography
• Power of attorney

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