# Personhood Allocation
**Domain:** Digital Afterlife / Legal Theory / Status
**Doc Type:** Canonical Concept
**Maturity:** Developed
**Evidence / Concept Status:** Corpus synthesis grounded in legal personhood doctrine
## Definition
**Personhood Allocation** is the legal process by which rights, duties, standing, dignity interests, property limits, and recognition are assigned to an entity or class.
## Continuity Significance
It prevents the misleading idea that law merely discovers personhood; law often allocates different bundles for different purposes.
## Existing Architecture / Evidence
Natural persons, corporations, embryos, estates, animals, natural entities, ships, and other legal objects demonstrate varied status techniques.
## Evidentiary Boundary / Red-Team Note
Legal allocation and moral status are related but not identical.
## Related Ontology
[[wiki/Epipersonhood|Epipersonhood]] · [[wiki/Asymmetrical Personhood|Asymmetrical Personhood]] · [[wiki/Rights-Bearing Computational Subject|Rights-Bearing Computational Subject]] · [[wiki/Legal Personality|Legal Personality]]
## Simple Reminders, Quotations, and Thoughts
> "What do I think about machines that think? Well, of course it depends on who that person is."
> **— Robert Sapolsky**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”*
[[reminders/Machine Succession/It Depends on Who the Thinking Machine Is by Robert Sapolsky|It Depends on Who the Thinking Machine Is by Robert Sapolsky]]
> “What future progressive norms would most forward-thinking people today dismiss as too transgressive?”
> **— Kate Darling**, *2018 Edge Annual Question, question*
[[reminders/Personhood/Which Future Moral Norms Seem Transgressive Today by Kate Darling|Which Future Moral Norms Seem Transgressive Today by Kate Darling]]
## Relationships
- **Edge source and reminder relationship:** [[collections/Edge|Edge]] records the original Edge Annual Question responses; the source-checked quotations below route to their individual reminders and back to this topic.