Life Estate - Validity of A Life Estate

Validity of A Life Estate

The early common law did not recognize a life estate in personal property, but such interests were cognizable in equity. Thus, although life estates in real estate are still created today, the life estate is more commonly used in trust instruments, typically in an attempt to minimize the effect of the inheritance tax or other taxes on transfers of wealth.

The law of England and Wales no longer recognises the life estate at law in relation to land; instead the holder of legal title to the land (whether the freehold fee simple or a lease) will hold that land on trust first for the life tenant and then for the remainderman.

Read more about this topic:  Life Estate

Famous quotes containing the words validity of, validity, life and/or estate:

    The hardiest skeptic who has seen a horse broken, a pointer trained, or has visited a menagerie or the exhibition of the Industrious Fleas, will not deny the validity of education. “A boy,” says Plato, “is the most vicious of all beasts;” and in the same spirit the old English poet Gascoigne says, “A boy is better unborn than untaught.”
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    It does not follow, because our difficulties are stupendous, because there are some souls timorous enough to doubt the validity and effectiveness of our ideals and our system, that we must turn to a state controlled or state directed social or economic system in order to cure our troubles.
    Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)

    This is the day His hour of life draws near,
    Let me get ready from head to foot for it
    Most handily with eyes to pick the year
    For small feed to reward a feathered wit.
    Allen Tate (1899–1979)

    Not a flock of wild geese cackles over our town, but it to some extent unsettles the value of real estate here, and, if I were a broker, I should probably take that disturbance into account.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)