What Is a Home?
A home is a physical domicile or structure in which a person or household resides. In a legal sense, a home is the place of permanent residency where one lives, or intends to return to live.
key takeaways
- Legally, a home is a person's permanent primary residence—even if they aren't currently living there.
- A physical location is still legally considered a home if there is an intention to return and the resident has not claimed someplace else as their legal place of permanent or principal residence.
- A home can determine everything from the taxes one pays to one's citizenship status to the laws one follows.
Understanding a Home
While it is full of emotional connotations, a home has specific legal connotations, as it is used to determine many things, from tax liability to a person’s status in the country they reside in. It can also be used to determine which state's probate laws are followed, a state’s rights when it comes to collecting taxes, and citizenship when a person resides in a different country than where they were born.
If a person owns more than one dwelling, like a vacation home or an investment property, for example, their primary residence is the location that will be considered their legal home. This legal status will impact how their taxes are paid on that property, as opposed to their responsibility for taxes on their other properties. There are certain write-offs and deductions that can only be used on a person’s primary residence.
The type of homeowner’s insurance or hazard insurance that a person carries on their home will also vary based on the type of occupancy. Since a home is an owner-occupied property, certain additional coverages apply—as opposed to a non-owner-occupied property, which may only carry a policy that covers the building and not the contents. The latter would be the case with a property that is occupied by someone other than the owner, like a rental property. A renter may choose to carry their own renter's insurance to protect their belongings within the rented unit, but it is the building's landlord who can carry homeowners insurance (or a commercial version thereof)—which would generally cover only the building and its infrastructure.
Although a home may be vacant if a person is traveling for an extended period, or has been hospitalized, the location is still legally considered their home if there is an intention to return and they have not claimed someplace else as their legal place of permanent or principal residence.