Hello Reader, this time Tabir Hukum will discuss about conditional freehold estates.
One advantage of the concept of the estate is its flexibility. We have already seen how O can grant L a leasehold or life estate while retaining the fee simple in reversion. O can also grant a fee simple and retain a reversionary interest, if the grant of the fee simple is conditional on the grantee or someone else doing or refraining from doing something, or on the continuation of certain conditions. Similarly, grantors can grant conditional life estates.
But how can O retain something if O has granted a fee simple - the fullest bundle of rights and obligations in land at common law ?. To understand the answer to that question, think of what O owns not as a fee simple but as a fee simple absolute - not an egg but a whole egg. If O uses the formula "to A and heirs", A gets a fee simple absolute. O retains nothing and A has everything. But if we have a fee simple absolute, we can have fee simple, O grants A something less than the full circle of rights and obligations in the property, for the magic words "and heirs" are followed by additional words of limitation. So the words "and heirs" are given their established meaning, defining an estate that has the potential to last forever, while the additional words of limitation add the potential for an earlier termination.
We have already seen one kind of conditional estate - the fee tail. Conditional fees were commonly used in two other situations in feudal times, and continue to be used so today. First, A may be an ecclesiastical or educational body that O wants to support with a grant of land, but O wants the land back if A creases to exist or changes its functions. So O will make the conveyance "to A Ltd. so long as the land is used for church or university purposes" (because the grant is to a corporation, the conveyance need not contain the magic words "and its heirs"). Second, O might want to provide for his family but might not quite trust his eldest son. So O might convey "to my eldest son and his heirs so long as he continues to support his aged mother and spinster sisters". Despite some restrictions on the kinds of conditions that are enforceable, the ability to grant a conditional fee simple permitted grantors to exercise the power that comes wiht landholding, even from beyond the grave.
Umpteen posts of tabir hukum about conditional freehold estates, hopefully the writing of tabir hukum about conditional freehold estates can be beneficial.
Books : In Writing Tabir Hukum :
Alan M. Sinclair and Margaret E. McCallum, 2005. An Introduction to Real Property Law (Fifth Edition). LexisNexis : Canada.
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| Figure Property Law : Conditional Freehold Estates in Property Law |
