FUTURE INTERESTS-POWER OF TERMINATION-RESTRAINT ON ALIENATION- MERGER OF THE POWER OF TERMINATION WITH THE FEE SIMPLE SUBJECT TO A CONDITION SUBSEQUENT

Authors

Neil McKay S.Ed., University of Michigan Law SchoolFollow

Abstract

A conveyed two tracts of land to B, her daughter, by two deeds, reserving a life estate in each tract and restraining, by condition subsequent, alienation of them in any manner, for five years in one deed, and for twelve years in the second. In less than five years and before the restrictions were violated, A died and B was adjudged her sole and only heir at law. Thereafter B conveyed the land by quit claim deed to the defendant, her husband. B died a month later, leaving a will, by which she devised and bequeathed all her property to the defendant. The heirs of B were ad judged to be eight aunts and uncles, who are the plaintiffs here, and the defendant. Plaintiffs bring this action against the defendant to quiet title and obtain an accounting for rents and partition of the realty; they ask that each of the plaintiffs be decreed owner of an undivided one-sixteenth of the land and the defendant of an undivided one-half. Held, the restraint on alienation imposed by A was valid as being reasonably necessary to protect A's life estate; it was a condition subsequent to the grant to B, leaving a power of termination in A, which on A's death passed to B as A's sole heir, and ceased to exist because of the union in B of the power to enforce the restraint and the interest so restrained; title was, therefore, quieted in the defendant. Watson v. Dalton, (Neb. 1945) 18 N.W. (2d) 658.

Recommended Citation

Neil McKay S.Ed., FUTURE INTERESTS-POWER OF TERMINATION-RESTRAINT ON ALIENATION- MERGER OF THE POWER OF TERMINATION WITH THE FEE SIMPLE SUBJECT TO A CONDITION SUBSEQUENT, 44 Mich. L. Rev. 864 (1946).
Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol44/iss5/16