encumber
law specialized
a mortgage(= an agreement to borrow money from a bank, etc. to buy a property) or other charge to pay on a property, or the fact that a property has a mortgage or other charge to pay on it:
They were buying land without encumbrances for between $100 and $500 an acre.
To make a reasonable risk evaluation it is important to know what other encumbrances there are on the property title.
I confirm that no charge, hire-purchase agreement or other incumbrance affects the property.
Her cancer has not proved to be an encumbrance on her daily life.
We enjoy exploring the city without the encumbrance of a car.
The company has scrapped the encumbrance of fixed production targets.
For him, memories of the past were merely an incumbrance.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Preventing and impeding
anti-drug
anti-jamming
avoid
avoidable
avoidably
fireproof
flameproof
guard against something
hamper
hang
have someone/something hanging round your neckidiom
head off
preclusion
preclusive
prejudice
prevent
preventable
scuttle
smother
suffocate

You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:

Mortgages & real estate

encumbrance | Business English

encumbrance
noun[ C or U ]
uk /ɪnˈkʌmbrəns/us
LAW, PROPERTY
a mortgage or other charge on a property, or the fact of a property having a mortgage, etc.:
An encumbrance is a legal claim on a property that affects the owner's ability to transfer the ownership of the property.
something that makes it difficult to do things:
He had paid off his loans and was free of the encumbrance of debt.

Examples of encumbrance

encumbrance
An electronic machine, in effect, is not a tool given to the musician without encumbrances.
This concept circumscribes the prerogatives and encumbrances of a particular type of social membership, whose scope has generally been established by the nation-state.
Several of our authors suggest ways of preventing or managing this encumbrance of intellectual property.
The encumbrance of private ownership: are we facing a 'tragedy of the anti-commons'?
In other words, they may not have the encumbrance of old-fashioned expectations of the behaviour appropriate for older people.
He and this industry's trade press journalists are all specialists and would find a general press officer an encumbrance.
If this were the case, then marriage might even begin to appear an unnecessary encumbrance on a woman's energies.
It was not about negotiating voluntary agreements where access is viewed as an encumbrance on private land but rather an expression of rights.
While linguists might delight in the usefulness and elegance of the concept, for most learners it would be an unnecessary encumbrance.
Then operations will always use the correct function, and only the creation operations will have the encumbrance of taking the function as a parameter.
He certainly wanted to be free from distractions and encumbrances when he was working, but nothing in his actions looks like 'bonding' with a particular place.
Looking at our sundry communal attachments through this morally more critical eye, we find that some of the encumbrances which seem sociologically, psychologically or ontologically necessary also seem morally desirable.
They were able to carry out their tasks without the encumbrance of a complex organisation; generally each part of their expedition was under their control rather than committees.
A case-marking system is little more than an encumbrance in a language when the forms no longer clearly signal any information which aids in understanding the message.
The loquaciousness which had already irritated friends at the university, his words that would "blossom into _ower," now becomes a decided encumbrance since his father disowned him.
See all examples of encumbrance
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