Base Fee
The Cyclopedic Law Dictionary · Walter A. Shumaker and George Foster Longsdorf; ed. James C. Cahill · 1922
The Cyclopedic Law Dictionary
A fee which has a qualification annexed to it, and which must be determined whenever the annexed qualification requires. A grant to A. and his heirs, tenants of Dale, continues only while they are such tenants.
2 Bl. Comm. 109.
The proprietor of such a fee has all the rights of the owner of a fee simple until his estate is determined.
Plowd. 557; -.1 Washb. Real Prop. 62; 1 Prest. Est. 431; Co. Litt. lb.
One of the peculiarities of a base or determinable fee is that it may become a fee simple absolute on the happening of any event which renders impossible the event or combination of events upon which such an estate is to end. It is the uncertainty of the event, and the possibility that the fee may not last forever, that renders a base or determinable estate a fee, and not merely a freehold. BASE INFEFTMENT (Scotch). A disposition of land by a vassal, to be held of himself.