# Epipersonhood **Domain:** Digital Afterlife / Legal Theory / Personhood **Doc Type:** Canonical Concept **Maturity:** Developed **Evidence / Concept Status:** 2026 legal-theory proposal ## Definition **Epipersonhood** is a proposed intermediate legal status for entities that merit enforceable dignity interests and limits on property treatment without receiving the full rights of human legal persons. ## Continuity Significance It offers a possible middle category for embryos, animals, natural entities, nonsentient AI, or ambiguous human-derived digital entities when person/property binaries are too crude. ## Existing Architecture / Evidence The term is developed in 2026 legal scholarship on the law's shifting circles of moral concern. ## Evidentiary Boundary / Red-Team Note Epipersonhood is scholarship, not enacted general law. Its application to digital continuants is a corpus extension. ## Related Ontology [[wiki/Property-Person Boundary|Property-Person Boundary]] · [[wiki/Asymmetrical Personhood|Asymmetrical Personhood]] · [[wiki/Rights-Bearing Computational Subject|Rights-Bearing Computational Subject]] · [[wiki/Precautionary Standing|Precautionary Standing]] ## Sources / Provenance - https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/faculty_scholarship/1447/