Estates - Freehold

Question 1

Freehold Estates - Three Estates

Answer 1

1. Fee Simple
2. Fee Tail
3. Life Estate

Question 2

The Fee Simple

Answer 2

Largest estate recognized by common law (because it may continue forever)
Classified as either absolute or defeasible

Question 3

The Fee Tail

Answer 3

An estate in land created by a conveyance “to A and the heirs of his body.”
Can only be created today in Delaware, Maine, Maryland, and Rhode Island, but generally the fee tail has been replaced by the life estate as a device for controlling inheritance.
Essentially a successive series of life estates.

Question 4

The Life Estate

Answer 4

Will give the life estate holder present rights, including the right to transfer, the holder of the future interest has a property interest that could usually be transferred presently.

Question 5

Fee Simple Determinable

Answer 5

1. Fee simple so limited that it will end automatically when a stated event happens.
2. Created by language connoting that the transferor is conveying a fee simple only until an event happens.
3. Every fee simple determinable is accompanied by a future interest (possibility of reverter)

Question 6

Fee Simple Subject to Condition Subsequent

Answer 6

1. A fee simple that does not automatically terminate but may be cut short or divested at the transferor’s election when a stated condition happens.
2. Created by a conveyance of a fee simple, followed by language providing that the fee simple may be divested by the transferor if a specific event happens
3. Future interest retained by the transferor to divest is called a right of entry (power of termination)

Question 7

Fee Simple Subject to Executory Limitation

Answer 7

The estate created when a grantor transfers a defeasible fee simple, either a determinable fee simple or a fee simple subject to condition subsequent, and in the same instrument creates a future interest in a third party rather than in himself.