Destructibility of contingent remainders

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A common law rule "that a freehold contingent remainder which does not vest at or before the termination of the preceding freehold estate is destroyed. Such termination of the preceding estate might result from the natural expiration of that estate, or from forfeiture, or from merger." [1]

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The Rule in Shelley's Case is a rule of law that may apply to certain future interests in real property and trusts created in common law jurisdictions. It was applied as early as 1366 in The Provost of Beverly's Case but in its present form is derived from Shelley's Case (1581), in which counsel stated the rule as follows:

…when the ancestor by any gift or conveyance takes an estate of freehold, and in the same gift or conveyance an estate is limited either mediately or immediately to his heirs in fee simple or in fee tail; that always in such cases, 'the heirs' are words of limitation of the estate, not words of purchase.

References

  1. Moynihan, Introduction to the Law of Real Property 173-76 (3d ed. 2002).