III. Estates in reversion.The residue of the estate left in the grantor, which reverts to him on the de termination of the estate grant ed by him. Of the origin and nature of reversions. Thus much for such estates in expectancy, as are created by the express words of the parties themselves; the most intricate title in the law. There is yet another species, which is created by the act and operation of the law itself, and this is called a reversion. : III. An estate in reversion is the residue of an estate left in the grantor, to commence in possession after the determination of some particular estate granted out by him (9). Sir Edward Coke (r) describes a reversion to be the returning of land to the grantor or his heirs after the grant is over. As, if there be a gift in tail, the reversion of the fee is, without any special reservation, vested in the donor by act of law and so also the reversion, after an estate for life, years, or at will, continues in the lessor. For the fee-simple of all lands must abide somewhere; and if he, who was before possessed of the whole, carves out of it any smaller estate, and grants it away, whatever is not so granted remains in him. A reversion is never therefore created by deed or writing, but arises from construction of law; a remainder can never be limited, unless by either deed or devise. But both are equally transferable, when actually vested, being both estates in præsenti (18), though taking effect in fu turo. The doctrine of reversions is plainly derived from the feodal constitution (19). For, when a feud was granted to a man for life, or to him and his issue male rendering either rent or other services; then, on his death, or the failure of issue male, the feud was determined, and resulted back to (g) Co. Litt. 22. Doe v. Jesson, 5 Mau. & Sel. 69; (r) 1 Inst. 142. Vandes, 9 Ves. 203 :) and see supra, another instance mentioned, in which the same words operate differently upon different descriptions of property. (18) Although a person can only be said to be entitled to, not seised of, a reversion; yet reversions are vested interests, which may be aliened and charged much in the same manner as estates in possession. (Wiscot's case, 2 Rep. 61.) (19) See ante, chap. 4, pp. 45, 56, with the notes thereto. sure. the *lord or proprietor, to be again disposed of at his pleaAnd hence the usual incidents to reversions are said to be fealty and rent. When no rent is reserved on the particular estate, fealty however results of course, as an incident quite inseparable, and may be demanded as a badge of tenure, or acknowledgment of superiority; being frequently the only evidence that the lands are holden at all. Where rent is reserved, it is also incident; though not inseparably so, to the reversion (s). The rent may be granted away, reserving the reversion; and the reversion may be granted away, reserving the rent; by special words: but by a general grant of the reversion, the rent will pass with it, as incident thereunto; though by the grant of the rent generally, the reversion will not pass. The incident passes by the grant of the principal, but not e converso: for the maxim of law is," accessorium non ducit, sed sequitur, suum prin"cipale" (t). tutes a reversion. These incidental rights of the reversioner, and the re- What constispective modes of descent, in which remainders very frequently differ from reversions, have occasioned the law to be careful in distinguishing the one from the other, however inaccurately the parties themselves may describe them. For if one, seised of a paternal estate in fee, makes a lease for life, with remainder to himself and his heirs, this is properly a mere reversion (u), to which rent and fealty shall be incident; and which shall only descend to the heirs of his father's blood, and not to his heirs general, as a remainder limited to him by a third person would have done (w): for it is the old estate, which was originally in him, and never yet was out of him. And so likewise, if a man grants a lease for life to A., reserving rent, with reversion to B. and his heirs, B. hath a remainder descendible to his heirs general, and not a reversion to which the rent is incident; but the grantor shall be entitled to the rent, during the continuance of A.'s estate (x). versioners *In order to assist such persons as have any estate in re- [ * 177 ] mainder, reversion, or expectancy, after the death of others, Protection of reagainst fraudulent concealments of their deaths, it is enacted against the frauby the statute 6 Ann. c. 18, that all persons on whose lives ment of the dulent conceal death of the ces Of the doctrine of merger. any Before we conclude the doctrine of remainders and reversions, it may be proper to observe, that whenever a greater estate and a less coincide and meet in one and the same person, without any intermediate estate (y), the less is immediately annihilated; or, in the law phrase, is said to be merged (20), that is, sunk or drowned in the greater. Thus (y) 3 Lev. 437. (20) Even if there be an intermediate contingent estate, it will be destroyed by the union and coalition of the greater estate and the less, (unless the greater estate is subjoined to the less by the same conveyance,) when such coalition takes place by the conveyance or act of the parties. (Purefoy v. Rogers, 2 Saund. 387.) But the reports of adjudged cases apparently differ with respect to the destruction of an intermediate contingent estate, in cases where the greater estate becomes united to the less by descent: these differences, however, may be reconeiled, by distinguishing between those cases where the descent of the greater estate is immediate from the person by whose will the less estate, as well as the intermediate contingent estate, were limited; and the cases where the less estate and the contingent remainders were not created by the will of the ancestor from whom the greater estate immediately descends on the less estate. In the first set of cases, the descent of the greater estate does not merge and drown the intermediate contingent remainders; (Boothley v. Vernon, 9 Mod. 147; Plunkett v. Holmes, 1 Lev. 12; Archer's case, 1 Rep. 66;) in the second class of cases, it does merge them. (Hartpole v. Kent, T. Jones, 77; S. C. 1 Ventr. 307; Hooker v. Hooker, Rep. temp. Hardw. 13; Doe v. Scudamore, 2 Bos. & Pull. 294; and see Fearne, p. 343, 6th ed., with Serjt. Williams's note to 2 Saund. 382 a.) A distinction (as already has been intimated,) must be made between the cases where a particular estate is limited, with a contingent remainder over, and afterwards the inheritance is subjoined to the particular estate by the same conveyance; and those cases wherein the accession of the inheritance is by a conveyance, accident, or circumstance, distinct from that conveyance which created the particular estate. In the latter cases, we have seen, the contingent remainder is generally destroyed; in the former it is otherwise. For, where by the same conveyance a particular estate is first limited to a person, with a contingent remainder over to another, and with such a reversion or remainder to the first person as would, in its own nature, drown the particular estate first given him; this last limitation shall be considered as executed only sub modo; that is, upon such condition as to open and separate itself from the if there be tenant for years, and the reversion in fee-simple descends to or is purchased by him, the term of years is merged in the inheritance, and shall never exist any more. But they must come to one and the same person in one and the same right; else, if the freehold be in his own right, and he has a term in right of another (en auter droit) there is no merger. Therefore, if tenant for years dies, and makes him who hath the reversion in fee his executor, whereby the term of years vests also in him, the term shall not merge; for he hath the fee in his own right, and the term of years in the right of the testator, and subject to his debts and legacies. So, also, if he who hath the reversion in fee marries the tenant for years, there is no merger; for he hath the inheritance in his own right, the lease in the right of his wife (z). An estate-tail is an exception to this rule; for a man may have in his own right both an estate-tail and a reversion in fee; and the estate-tail, though a less estate, shall not merge in the fee (a). For estates-tail are protected and preserved from merger by the *operation and construc- [178] tion, though not by the express words, of the statute de donis: which operation and construction have probably arisen upon this consideration; that, in the common cases of merger of estates for life or years by uniting with the inheritance, the particular tenant hath the sole interest in them, and hath full power at any time to defeat, destroy, or surrender them to him that hath the reversion; therefore, when such an estate unites with the reversion in fee, the law considers it in the light of a virtual surrender of the inferior estate (b). But, in an estate tail, the case is otherwise: the (z) Plow. 418; Cro. Jac. 275; Co. Litt. 338. first estate, when the condition happens; and by no means to destroy the contingent estate. (Lewis Bowles' case, 11 Rep. 80; Fearne, 346, 6th ed.) A court of equity will in some cases relieve against the merger of a term, and make it answer the purposes for which it was created. Thus, in Powell v. Morgan, (2 Vern. 90,) a portion was directed to be raised out of a term for (a) 2 Rep. 61; 8 Rep. 74. years, for the testator's daughter. The tenant for a long time had no power at all over it, so as to bar or destroy it, and now can only do it by certain special modes, by a fine, a recovery, and the like (c): it would therefore have been strangely improvident to have permitted the tenant in tail, by purchasing the reversion in fee, to merge his particular estate, and defeat the inheritance of his issue; and hence it has become a maxim, that a tenancy in tail, which cannot be surrendered, cannot also be merged in the fee. (c) See pag. 116. |