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🎧 EPISODE SUMMARY 🎧
Estates and future interests are the grammar of Property. The student’s first task is classification. A fee simple absolute is potentially infinite and freely transferable, devisable, and descendible.
A fee simple determinable ends automatically upon the triggering event and is followed by a possibility of reverter.
A fee simple subject to condition subsequent does not end automatically. The grantor must exercise a right of entry.
A fee simple subject to executory limitation automatically shifts to another transferee, who holds an executory interest.
A life estate lasts for the life of a specified person. A life estate may also be measured by another person’s life. Life tenants are subject to rules against voluntary, permissive, and ameliorative waste.
Future interests retained by a grantor include reversions, possibilities of reverter, and rights of entry.
Future interests in transferees include remainders and executory interests.
A remainder waits for the natural end of the preceding estate. It may be indefeasibly vested, vested subject to complete divestment, vested subject to open, or contingent.
Executory interests cut short another estate or divest the grantor. They may be shifting or springing.
The traditional Rule Against Perpetuities acts as a validity screen for certain future interests. Students should identify the interest, determine whether the Rule applies, identify the vesting condition, find possible validating lives, and ask whether vesting could occur more than twenty-one years after all relevant lives in being have died.
The most important examination lesson is procedural:
Identify the present estate.
Identify every future interest.
Classify each interest precisely.
Apply defeasibility rules.
Apply RAP if relevant.
Then determine possession.
Precise classification comes before argument. Once the interests are correctly identified, the rest of the Property analysis becomes substantially easier.
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