Mortmain

A term applied to denote the alienation of lands or tenements to any corporation, sole or aggregate, ecclesiastical or temporal. These purchases having been chiefly made by religious houses, in consequence of which lands became perpetually inherent in one dead hand, this has occasioned the general appellation of "mortmain" to be applied to such alienations. 2 BL Comm. 268; Co. Litt 2b; Perin v. Carey, 24 How. 495, 16 In Ed. 701.

— Mortmain acts. These acts had for their object to prevent lands getting into the possession or control of religious corporations, or, as the name indicates, in mortua manu. After numerous prior acts dating from the reign of Edward I., it was enacted by the statute 9 Geo. II. c. 36, (calied the "Mortmain Act" par excellence,) that no lands should be given to charities unless certain requisites should be observed. Brown. Yates v. Yates, 9 Barb. (N. Y.) 324.