Perpetuity

1.

Of the sovereign! absolute immortality in his political capacity. ' 3. The settlemeht of an interest in property, which will go in the succession prescribed, without any power of alienation.^ A grant of property wherein the vesting of an interest is unlawfully postponed.* So called, not because the grant, as written, would actually make the estate perpetual, but because it transgresses the limits which the law has set in restraint of grants that tend to a perpetual suspense of the title, or of its vesting, or, as it Is sometimes expressed, with less accuracy, to a perpetual prevention of alienation,^ A limitation of property which renders it inalienable beyond the period allowed by law,8 — a life or lives in being and twentyone years more, with a fraction of a year added for the term of gestation, in cases of posthumous birth. All that is required is that the estate shall vest within the prescribed period. The right Of possession may be postponed longer.' Perpetuities are abhorred by the law. They make estates incapable of answering the ends of social commerce, and providing for the sudden contingencies of private life, for which property was at first established.^ Trusts created for charitable or public pmT)oses are not subject to the rule.'

See Accumulation; Charity, 2; Mortmain. 1 3 Bl. Com. 450. = 2 Story, Eq. §§ 1505-13; Hall v. Stout, 4 Del. Oh. 873 (1871); 3 Daniel, Oh. Pr. 955; 1 Pomeroy, Eq. §§ 83, 810. » 1 Bl. Com. 249. » 2 Bl. Com. 174. s City of Philadelphia v. Girard's Heirs, 45 Pa. 26 (1868), Lowrie, C. J.; 10 id. 334; 88 td. 495. «Ould V. Washington Hospital, 95 U. S. 318 (1877), Swayne, J. See also Perin v. Carey, 24 How. 494 (1860): Saund. Uses, &c. 196; Mo Arthur v. Scott, 113 U. S. 383- 83 (1885), cases. Gray, J. ' Bruce v. Nickerson, 141 Mass. 403 (1886). « 3 Bl. Com. 174; Quid's Case, sapra; De Wolf v. Lawson, 61 Wis). 474 (1884); 76 Va. 147.