Privity of estate

“ But if a man grant an estate in fee-simple, reserving to himself and his heirs a certain rent; and that, if such rent be not paid at the times limited, it shall be lawful for him and his heirs to re-enter, and avoid the estate ”

“ I am old, and must soon pass away, and instead of leaving you and your parents, who would be my legitimate heirs, to squabble over my property when I am gone, I decided to excute a will bequeathing my estate to some one who would take proper care of it and maintain it in a creditable manner. ”

“ The mind is at a loss to conceive what interest in an estate can appertain to parties who are never to have it in possession, never to receive one dollar of its revenues, never to alienate it, and never, even, to manage, administer, or control it. ”

“ If a lord had given his villein any certain estate, it was, as I before observed, an absolute manumission for ever. But some lords, either in reward for services done, or out of bounty, gave many of those underling tenants, if not an absolute right to their holdings, at least, a fair claim and title to a permanent estate, which, in honour, the lord or his heirs could not defeat, and yet kept them in a particular kind of dependance, between freedom and absolute villenage. ”

“ The convenience of mankind, the public policy of protecting innocent purchasers, and the repose of titles honestly acquired, require some limitation upon powers of this nature, and we know of none more just and equitable than this, that when the right of entry to the land is gone, or the estate is gone by an adverse possession from those who held as heirs or devisees, the whole interest in the land, the power of the administrator to make sale of the land for payment of debts, is gone also. ”

“ It is contrary to the policy of the law that there should be any outstanding titles, estates, or powers, by the existence, operation or exercise of which, at a period of time beyond lives in being and twenty-one years and a fraction thereafter, the complete and unfettered enjoyment of an estate, with all the rights, privileges and powers incident to ownership, should be qualified or impeded. ”

“ One may create an estate which will descend in unbroken succession down the line of inheritance prescribed in the original gift as long as that line should last, instead of descending to all heirs. The successive occupants might draw the rents and cut the wood, but on the death of each, his heir would take possession of an unencumbered interest, unfettered by any liability for the debt of his ancestor or by any disposition made by him during his lifetime e.g. a wife's estate in dower or a husband's estate in courtesy. ”

“ The next provision invests his executors with full power and authority to sell and convey any part of his estate wherever situated, which is not in the will specifically devised or bequeathed. He next directs that in the event of the sale of his Ashland property, the proceeds shall be loaned out upon good and sufficient security, and that the interest accruing thereon be regularly paid to his wife during her life, and upon her death, the property in trust should pass into his residuary estate after the payment of the legacies mentioned in the will. ”

“ Equity has been ready, where such property remains in her hands, to restore it to its proper use, but not to hold her separate estate liable for what she has received, and probably spent at his dictation. ”

“ In some other cases, when all the interests are legal and not equitable, the owner of the first estate of freehold, representing the whole estate, and identified in interest with all who come after him, sufficiently represents those yet unborn. ”

“ As, if the grant be to a man and his issue of his body, to a man and his feed, to a man and his children, or offspring; all these are only estates for life, there wanting the words of inheritance, his heirs [49] . So, on the other hand, a gift to a man, and his heirs male, or female, is an estate in fee-simple, and not in fee-tail; for there are no words to ascertain the body out of which they shall issue [50] . Indeed, in last wills and testaments, wherein greater indulgence is allowed, an estate-tail may be created by a devise to a man and his feed, or to a man and his heirs male ”

“ I suppose, now, a large estate may turn out a fortunate or unfortunate legacy accordingly as you use it; but if your legacy is only the knowledge that the estate ought to be yours, and isn't, that is a fine set of circumstances! ”

“ At law, it is still real estate; that is, supposing A. Young to be either dead, or his legacy paid. And it deserves to be remarked, that the testator drops these words, when he speaks of what he himself deems personal estate.
Our construction is the only reasonable and practicable one. Heirs, standing alone, is never a word of purchase; and when it is a word of purchase, it always means, that the heir is to take in exclusion of the ancestor. [3] Thus, where an estate is given to the ancestor for life, the heir may take by purchase, so that the estates will not unite. ”

“ It is possible that an estate may be suddenly raised. There are those that will be rich, by right or wrong, who make no conscience of what they say or do if they can but get money by it, who, when it is in their power, will cheat their own father, and who sordidly spare and hoard up what they get, grudging themselves and their families food convenient and thinking all lost but what they buy land with or put out to interest. By such ways as these a man may grow rich, may grow very rich, in a little time, at his first setting out. 2. An estate that is suddenly raised is often as suddenly ruined. ”

“ For many times the things deduced to judgment may be meum and tuum, when the reason and consequence thereof may trench to point of estate: I call matter of estate, not only the parts of sovereignty, but whatsoever introduceth any great alteration, or dangerous precedent; or concerneth manifestly any great portion of people. And let no man weakly conceive, that just laws and true policy have any antipathy; for they are like the spirits and sinews, that one moves with the other. ”

“ Before proceeding to the particular examination of the legal effect of these different clauses in the will, it is necessary to state that, where there are no words of limitation to a devise, the general rule of law is, that the devisee takes an estate for life only, unless, from the language there used, or from other parts of the will, there is a plain intention to give a larger estate. ”

“ Such a power necessarily ceases with the life of the person making it. But if the interest, or estate, passes with the power, and vests in the person by whom the power is to be exercised, such person acts in his own name. The estate, being in him, passes from him by a conveyance in his own name. He is no longer a substitute, acting in the place and name of another, but is a principal acting in his own name, in pursuance of powers which limit his estate. ”

“ It is the duty of every owner of an estate to administer that estate and also to increase the other sources of his wealth, to the best possible advantage. If any one fails to observe this duty, and thinks that the estate was obtained by his ancestors for his sake alone, he and his children will be ruined and the estate will be gradually sold to others. His subjects also, who have laboured for generations, would therefore be compelled to serve another master. There is no occasion, then, to praise a man when he performs his duty. ”

“ Homesteads generally, estates of dower and curtesy frequently, as well as other portions of an estate, are not the subject of devise or bequest.
“There never was a fitter application of Pope’s line, ‘A little learning is a dangerous thing,’ than in the preparation of wills; and it is a most astounding fact that men who have lived prudently, who have been conservative and successful in business, who have accumulated large wealth, who have been buffeted by every wave of misfortune, will attempt, by their own hands or through incompetent agents, to write their wills. ”

“ A man has a right to an estate in fee simple, a right to land, and there is no right more indisputable under our system. Nothing but the supreme law can take the estate away, and then only after compensation. ”

“ As it is of very little use for a man to find himself legatee of an estate, out of which there is nothing to pay his bequest, so also is it an equal evil if notwithstanding the existence of property to constitute an estate the assets, or the produce of that property be either uncollected or wasted, so that the legatees derive no benefit from them. ”

“ If it is a mere personal right, it can be enjoyed only by the owner of the right, and when he dies, the right dies with him. But a right of way belonging to an estate may be conveyed when the land is sold. Thus, if a man owns lot A and lot B, and he used a way from lot A, over lot B, to a mill, or to a river; and if he sells lot A with all ways and easements, the grantee will have the same privilege of passing over lot B as the grantor had. ”

“ The equitable estate created by the gift in the sixteenth clause of the income to the children and grandchildren, being an estate which must endure for the lives of the children, and might endure throughout the lives of the grandchildren, though subject to be sooner determined in the contingency of the coming of age of the youngest grandchild, was technically an estate for life. ”

“ A topic of this sort, of which the person himself may be considered as almost sole proprietor and patentee, is an estate for life, free from all incumbrance of wit, thought, or study, you live upon it as a settled income; and others might as well think to eject you out of a capital freehold house and estate as think to drive you out of it into the wide world of common sense and argument. Every man’s house is his castle ”

“ A widower, if his wife has borne a living child, is entitled to the use of one-third of her real estate for life, and one-third of her personal property. If there are no heirs, lineal or collateral, he takes the whole estate absolutely. ”

“ But this was equally well expressed in terms of the fiction employed. In order to vouch, the present owner must have the estate of the person to whom the warranty was made. As every lawyer knows, the estate does not mean the land. It means the status or persona in regard to that land formerly sustained by another. The same word was used in alleging a right by prescription, "that he and those whose estate he hath have for time whereof memory runneth not to the contrary," &c.; and it will be remembered that the word corresponds to the same requirement of succession there. ”

“ The heir, whether the eldest or the youngest son, is subjected to the same obligations as in respect of freehold; and if the gavelkind custom applies, each share on a further intestacy descends to the heirs of the co-heir. In this way has been illustrated the disadvantage of any rule of law which makes real estate divisible. We knew a small copyhold estate consisting of a cottage and garden, which became by successive intestacies subdivided into shares, some of which were worth no more than two shillings per year each. ”

“ Now, would not the man who held this property on such a tenure, look sharply to his own interest, and endeavour to discover by what means he could turn his estate to the best account, before its extent should be so far diminished as to cripple his means? ”

“ An estate pur autre vie in incorporeal hereditaments—as a rent, for instance, granted by one person to another, during the life of a third party, and the grantor of which dies during the life-time of the person who holds the property—goes to the executor. ”

“ The proviso is this: That should you not live to be seventy years of age, the estate, and all pertaining to it, shall pass away from you and yours at your death, and go to your cousin, the son of my brother Henry; or to his heirs, should he not be alive at the time. But should you overpass your seventieth birthday, though it be but by twelve short hours, the estate will remain yours, to will away to whom you please, or to dispose of as you may think best. ”

“ It has been expressly ruled, that a mere expectancy, as that of an heir at law to the estate of his ancestor, or the interest which a person may take under the will of another then living, or the share to which such person may become entitled under an appointment or in personal estate, as presumptive next of kin, is assignable in equity. ”

“ Should any of the beneficiaries under this my will, other than my said wife, object to the probate thereof, or in any wise, directly or indirectly, contest or aid in contesting the same, or any of the provisions thereof, or the distribution of my estate thereunder, then and in that event I annul any bequest herein made to such beneficiary, and it is my will that such beneficiary shall be absolutely barred and cut off from any share in my estate. ”

“ Thus for instance the law of property of the Middle Ages, with the object of preserving family property from generation to generation, and protecting it against dissipation, declares family property or "Estate" to be inalienable without the consent of the heirs. ”

“ The power to suffer a common recovery has been invariably held to be a privilege inseparably incident to an estate tail, and one which cannot be restrained by condition, limitation, custom, recognizance, or covenant. ”

“ Every man therefore, absolute master of his estate, having a right to give it on what terms he pleased, they began, not as before, to give lands to a man and his heirs in general, for that would have given an absolute dominion, but to heirs limited, as to the heirs of his body, or to the heirs male of his body, or to the heirs of his body by such a woman. ”