TITLE III. ESTATE FOR LIFE. CHAP. I. Of the Nature of an Estate for Life, and its Incidents. CHAP. II. Of Waste by Tenants for Life, CHAP. I. Of the Nature of an Estate for Life, and its Incidents. A N estate for life is a freehold interest in lands, lives of some particular person or persons; or to the VOL. I. How created. Holman Carth. 246. Ann. c. 18. 1 Inst. 41 b. tenant for life has a right to the possession, and annual produce of the land, during the continuance of his estate; without having the proprietas, that is, the absolute property and inheritance of the land itself; which is vested in some other person. 2. Estates for life are of two sorts; either expressly created by deed, or some other legal assurance, or else deriving their existence from the operation of some principle of law. 3. The first of these, which is the subject of the present title, arises where lands are conveyed to a man for the term of his own life, or that of any other person, or for more lives than one: in all which cases he is called tenant for life, except where he holds during the life of another; and then he is called tenant pour auter vie. 4. When a person having an estate for his or her own life, either by express limitation, or by the operation of some principle of law, grants it over; the grantee becomes tenant pour auter vie. 5. By the statute 19 Cha. II. c. 6. § 2., it is enacted, That if the persons for whose lives estates are granted shall go abroad, and no sufficient proof be made that they are alive; in any action commenced for the recovery of the lands, by the lessors. or reversioners, the judge shall direct the jury to give their verdict as if the persons so remaining abroad were dead. And it has been held that a remainder man is within this statute. 6. If lands are conveyed to a person for his own life, and that of A. and B. the grantee has an estate of freehold determinable on his own death, and the deaths of A. and B.; nor can there be any merger of the freehold, during the lives of A. and B. into the estate which the lessee has for his own life; because though an estate for a man's own life is greater than an estate for the life of any other person; yet here the lessee has not two distinct estates in him, but only one freehold, circumscribed with that limitation, as the measure of its continuance. 7. The estates for life mentioned in the preceding sections will generally endure as long as the life or lives for which they are granted. But there are some estates for life which may determine upon future contingencies, before the death of the persons to whom they are granted. 8. Thus if an estate be given to a woman, dum 1 Inst. 42 a. sola fuerit, or durante viduitate, or to a man and a woman during coverture, or as long as the grantee shall dwell in a particular house; in all these cases the grantees have estates for life, determinable the happening of these events. upon 9. If a manor generally worth £10 a year be 1 Inst. 42 a. granted to a person till he has received out of it £100, 6 Rep. 35 b. this will give him an estate for life: for as the profits are uncertain, and may rise and fall, no precise time can be fixed for the determination of the estate. Grantor. 10. Tenants for life hold of the grantors by fealty, Held of the and such other reservations as are contained in the deed by which the estate is created. Where there is Lit. § 132. no reservation, they hold by fealty only; this estate not being comprehended within the provisions of the Dissert. c. 3. statute Quia Emptores. $ 22. able. 11. An estate for life is not capable of being en- Not entailtailed under the statute De Donis; for all estates Tit. 2. c. ì. tail must be estates of inheritance. Therefore, where § 24. an estate for life or lives is limited to a person and the heirs of his body, the latter words only operate as a description of the persons who shall take as Low v. special occupants, during the life or lives for which Burron, 3 P. Wms. 262. tenant for nual prod his est the How created j+ the grantee takes the absinte She may dispose of by deed. for three lives was devised to trustees. for fe, remainder to F. for lite, re why to be and other sons in tail, with hs fs died. Sir F. Mannock, who was the ahmoter is died. the lifetime of his mother, then i pdf by fine sur concessit, and deed of uses, the cœate to himself and his heirs. mother's death he entered, surrendered sting lease, and took a new one for fresh Subsequent to this he made his will, and dethis estate to his wife, who contracted for the of it. The purchaser having some doubt whether Junitations were well barred, a bill was brought performance of the contract. Lord Nottingham said, this was a descendible freehold, not intailable within the statute De Donis; therefore no common recovery could be suffered of But the person who would have been tenant in tal, had it been an inheritance, was entitled to the absolute ownership; as, at common law, the conditional fee became absolute by the parties having issue. Decreed performance of the contract. 13. R. Blake devised a lease for three lives to trus10. tees, in trust for his son R. Blake, and the heirs male of his body; and in case he should die without issue, then for the plaintiff, his other son, in like manner, R. Blake the son surrendered the old lease, and took a new one for three lives, to him and his heirs. R. Blake the son died without issue, having by his will disposed of the lease. A bill was filed by his second son to have the benefit of the new lease; insisting that the surrender of the old lease, and the taking of the new one, were not sufficient to bar the limitation to the second son; and that those claiming under R. Blake the son ought to be declared trustees of the new lease, for the plaintiff. The Court of Exchequer was of opinion that R. Blake the son being tenant in tail*, a court of equity could not have called upon him to have declared such a trust in his lifetime; that there was 1 Cox's Rep. no stronger equity against his representatives; and Cooper's dismissed the bill. 14. This doctrine was fully confirmed by Lord Kenyon in a modern case, who also inclined to the opinion that a person having an estate of this kind might dispose of it by will. Lord Redesdale has said he could find no decision that at all warrants Lord Kenyon's dictum : that he found from his note of the case of Blake v. Blake, that though the estate was devised; the argument did not turn on the will, nobody conceiving that the estate would pass by it, if the quasi estate tail subsisted at the death of the testator. 15. An estate for life is subject to merge in the inheritance; therefore, whenever the tenant for life acquires the absolute property or inheritance of the lands, his estate becomes merged or drowned in the fee simple. 266. R. 178. Doe v. Luxton, 6 Term R. 291. 16. An estate pour auter vie will also merge in an Dyer, 10 b. estate for a man's own life; the latter being most 11 Rep. 83 b. valuable. Thus, if an estate be limited to a person for the life of another, remainder to himself for his own life, the first estate is merged. 17. Every tenant for life is entitled to estovers; that is, to allowance of necessary wood, which he may take upon the land, without any assignment, unless * This must be a mistake; he was quasi tenant in tail. Tenants for to Estovers. |