equity

noun · Equity

No German word holds it. Where equity names the second English system of law, keep the English word, German comparative writing does. Eigenkapital is right only for the capital sense, and Billigkeit, the reflex, reduces a body of law to a feeling for fairness.

Which translation, when

Equityuntranslated, the standard treatment when the word names the body of law developed by the Chancery courts. The foreign term tells the German reader a foreign system is speaking.

Eigenkapitalcorrect where the text is corporate or financial, equity capital, equity stake, private equity. A different sense of the word, not a legal-system reference.

Billigkeitthe German fairness word, at home in provisions like § 315 BGB on billiges Ermessen. Right only where equity is used loosely for fairness, never for the system or its remedies.

Why

Equity in the technical sense is not an idea, it is a body of law, the rules that grew up beside the common law in the Chancery courts and still shape English law, trusts, equitable remedies, equitable interests all carry its signature. German private law never went through that split, there is one law, not two layers with separate histories, so no German term has the same reach, and the settled habit of German legal writing is to keep the English word. The look-alikes each grab a fragment. Billigkeit is a genuine German concept, the fairness that tempers a rule, § 315 BGB lets a party determine performance nach billigem Ermessen, but it names a corrective inside the one system, not a second system. Eigenkapital belongs to the balance sheet and is exactly right there. A translation that writes Billigkeit where the source said equitable interest has not simplified the sentence, it has deleted the legal order the sentence relied on, and the German reader is left with an appeal to fairness where the English text located a right.

Typical mistakes

Billige Abhilfe for equitable relief reads as raw output, no German lawyer asks a court for billige Abhilfe, and the German reader hears cheap remedy before anything else.
Eigenkapital is confined to the money sense, in a sentence about courts, trusts or remedies it drags the balance sheet into the courtroom.
Billigkeitsrecht appears as a gloss for equity in older German writing, it works as a classroom label and fails in a legal text, a German Billigkeitsentscheidung is a different creature, a decision ex aequo et bono under § 1051 Abs. 3 ZPO, not a system of rules.

What matters

Trust deeds and remedies clauses carry the word at full weight: an equitable interest under a trust, an equitable remedy sought from a court. Rendered with Billigkeit the German version speaks of fairness where the English text asserted a right, and the counterparty’s German counsel cannot reconstruct which system was meant.

Authority

§ 315 BGB
§ 1051 Abs. 3 ZPO

What the machine misses

Equity splits the engines by training data, legal-adjacent output says Billigkeit, finance-adjacent output says Eigenkapital, and neither notices when the word named a legal system. An equitable interest comes back as billiges Interesse or as a stake on a balance sheet, and the body of law that made trusts and injunctions possible leaves no trace in the German sentence.

Examples

the rules of equity	die Regeln der Equity
an equitable remedy	ein Rechtsbehelf der Equity
equity capital	Eigenkapital
to decide in equity	nach Billigkeit entscheiden