sequestration

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun The act or process of sequestering.
• noun The sequestering of property.
• noun The writ authorizing such sequestering.
• noun The legal process by which such sequestering is accomplished.
• noun Chemistry The inhibition or prevention of normal ion behavior by combination with added materials, especially the formation of coordination compounds or chelates of metallic ions.
• noun The process of removing a chemical from the environment and sequestering it in an organic or physical structure.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun The act of sequestering, or the state of being sequestered or set aside; separation; retirement; seclusion from society.
• noun Disunion; disjunction; division; rupture.
• noun In law:
• noun The separation of a thing in controversy from the possession of those who contend for it.
• noun The setting apart of the goods and chattels of a deceased person to whom no one was willing to take out administration.
• noun A writ directed by the Court of Chancery to commissioners or to the sheriff, commanding them or him to enter the lands and seize the goods of the person against whom it is directed.
• noun The act of taking property from the owner for a time till the rents, issues, and profits satisfy a demand; especially, in ecclesiastical practice, a species of execution for debt in the case of a beneficed clergyman, issued by the bishop of the diocese on the receipt of a writ to that effect, under which the profits of the benefice are paid over to the creditor until his claim is satisfied.
• noun The gathering of the fruits of a vacant benefice for the use of the next incumbent.
• noun The seizure of the property of an individual for the use of the state: particularly applied to the seizure by a belligerent power of debts due by its subjects to the enemy.
• noun The seizing of the estate of an insolvent or a bankrupt, by decree of a competent court, for behoof of the creditors.
• noun The formation of a sequestrum; the separation of a dead piece of bone (or cartilage) from the living bone (or cartilage) about it.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun (Civil & Com. Law) The act of separating, or setting aside, a thing in controversy from the possession of both the parties that contend for it, to be delivered to the one adjudged entitled to it. It may be voluntary or involuntary.
• noun (Chancery) A prerogative process empowering certain commissioners to take and hold a defendant's property and receive the rents and profits thereof, until he clears himself of a contempt or performs a decree of the court.
• noun (Eccl. Law) A kind of execution for a rent, as in the case of a beneficed clerk, of the profits of a benefice, till he shall have satisfied some debt established by decree; the gathering up of the fruits of a benefice during a vacancy, for the use of the next incumbent; the disposing of the goods, by the ordinary, of one who is dead, whose estate no man will meddle with.
• noun (Internat. Law) The seizure of the property of an individual for the use of the state; particularly applied to the seizure, by a belligerent power, of debts due from its subjects to the enemy.
• noun The state of being separated or set aside; separation; retirement; seclusion from society.
• noun obsolete Disunion; disjunction.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun The process or act of sequestering.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun the action of forming a chelate or other stable compound with an ion or atom or molecule so that it is no longer available for reactions
• noun the act of segregating or sequestering
• noun a writ that authorizes the seizure of property
• noun seizing property that belongs to someone else and holding it until profits pay the demand for which it was seized