Introduction. The article is devoted to the consideration of the revealed peculiarities in the law enforcement practice of the legislation of the first half of the XIXth century on the example of the highest state institution – the Department of Estates, which ensured the allowance of the members of the imperial family. In the history of the Department under consideration the contradictory nature of monarchist power was revealed. The emperor, being the supreme legislator, was faced with a difficult dilemma: how to keep a balance between national and personal interests. While managing his own economy, he adjusted the state law enforcement practice to the interests of the Department, clarifying it with his resolutions. Methods. The main research methods were structural-functional and hermeneutic ones. They made it possible not only to work with the text and its meanings, but also to understand the peculiarities that distinguished the Department of Estates in the state system of higher institutions of the Russian Empire of the first half of the XIXth century. Results. The author concluded that the peculiarities of the law enforcement activity of the Department of Estates were primarily determined by the specificity of its tasks. Law enforcement activity was blurred by the interests of the members of the imperial family and general state tasks. The absence of some managerial decisions in normative legal acts and their fixation only in the form of resolutions to documents created unclearness (ambiguity). It caused contradictions in law enforcement activities and complicated the interaction of the Department of Estates with other state institutions of the Russian Empire.