Defeasible Studio Conveyance
Elizabeth conveyed the broadcast studio to Chad and his heirs. Chad mortgaged and developed the property as owner. The words of general inheritance created a fee simple absolute under the applicable Restatement rule.
Also known as: feuda simplicia · fee simple
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
A fee simple estate of potentially infinite duration inheritable by lineal and collateral heirs alike and freely alienable by the holder.
Elizabeth conveyed the broadcast studio to Chad and his heirs. Chad mortgaged and developed the property as owner. The words of general inheritance created a fee simple absolute under the applicable Restatement rule.
Lord Fairfax's heirs claimed the Northern Neck territory under royal grants running to the patentees their heirs and assigns forever. The estate passed through successive generations without restriction to lineal issue only. The court treated the interest as fully inheritable by general heirs.
In April 1791 an action of ejectment was commenced in a Virginia district court held at Winchester for recovery of land within the Northern Neck tract. Denny Fairfax, a British subject holding under the devise of Thomas Lord Fairfax, was admitted to defend upon the usual terms of confessing lease, entry and ouster. The facts were reduced to a case agreed and treated as a special verdict. On 24 April 1794 the district court entered judgment for the defendant. The plaintiff appealed to the Court of Appeals of Virginia, the highest court of law in the state. At its April term in 1810 that court reversed the district court judgment and entered judgment for the plaintiff. The case was then removed into the Supreme Court of the United States. At February term 1813 the Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeals judgment and issued a mandate directing that its judgment be carried into execution. The Court of Appeals unanimously declined to obey the mandate. It entered judgment declaring that the Supreme Court's appellate power did not extend to it under the Constitution, that section 25 of the Judiciary Act was not in pursuance of the Constitution, that the writ of error had been improvidently allowed, and that proceedings in the Supreme Court were coram non judice. A second writ of error was brought to the Supreme Court. The underlying facts agreed by the parties show that Lord Fairfax, a citizen and inhabitant of Virginia, died in December 1781 seized of approximately 300,000 acres in the Northern Neck. By his will he devised the lands in fee to his nephew Denny Martin, later Denny Fairfax, a native-born British subject who resided in England until his death between 1796 and 1803 and who never became a citizen of the United States. In 1789 the Governor of Virginia issued a patent granting a portion of the land, described as waste and ungranted and never escheated, to David Hunter, a Virginia citizen, pursuant to a treasury warrant dated 23 January 1788. The case agreed also incorporates the definitive treaty of peace of 1783, the treaty of amity of 1794, and the several Virginia statutes concerning land grants and escheats.
View caseThe Brandt Trust held land subject to a railroad right of way granted in fee. When the railroad abandoned the line the trust asserted full ownership. The Court confirmed that the original grant conveyed an estate of potentially infinite duration.
In 1908 the Laramie, Hahn's Peak and Pacific Railroad obtained a 200-foot-wide right of way across public lands in Wyoming under the General Railroad Right-of-Way Act of 1875. The railroad completed construction of its line in 1911. The line later passed through several owners and was used primarily to transport timber and cattle. In 1976 the United States issued a land patent conveying an 83-acre parcel in Fox Park, Wyoming, to Melvin and Lulu Brandt. The patent conveyed to the Brandts fee simple title to the land "with all the rights, privileges, immunities, and appurtenances, of whatsoever nature, thereunto belonging, unto said claimants, their successors and assigns, forever." The patent stated that the land was granted "subject to those rights for railroad purposes as have been granted to the Laramie[,] Hahn's Peak & Pacific Railway Company, its successors or assigns." The right of way crossed approximately ten acres of the patented parcel. In 1996 the Wyoming and Colorado Railroad notified the Surface Transportation Board of its intent to abandon the right of way. After removing the tracks and ties and obtaining Board approval, the railroad completed abandonment in 2004. In 2006 the United States filed suit seeking a judicial declaration of abandonment and an order quieting title to the right of way in the Government. The complaint named the owners of 31 parcels crossed by the abandoned right of way, including Marvin Brandt who held the Fox Park parcel through a family trust. Brandt contested the claim and filed a counterclaim asserting that the right of way was a mere easement extinguished by abandonment. The district court granted summary judgment to the United States. The Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit affirmed. The Supreme Court granted certiorari.
View caseWeedon devised land to his wife for life with remainder to their children. The widow sought to sell the property claiming a larger estate. The court held that the will created only a life estate rather than an inheritable fee simple.
John Harrison Weedon was born in High Point, North Carolina. After living throughout the South and two prior marriages that produced daughters Florence Weedon Baker and Delette Weedon Jones, he purchased Oakland Farm, a 152.95-acre tract in Alcorn County, in 1905. In 1915, at age 55, Weedon married 17-year-old Anna Plaxico; the couple worked the farm together, and Anna's daily labor hoeing, picking cotton, and milking fifteen cows protected the property during the difficult years after World War I. Weedon executed his will in 1925, granting Anna a life estate in all his property with remainder to her children if any existed and otherwise to his grandchildren in equal shares, while expressly excluding his daughters because they had not cared for him in his later years. Weedon died in 1932. Anna remarried J.E. Myers in 1933, but that union produced no children that would terminate the grandchildren's contingent remainder. Anna continued operating Oakland Farm until 1955, after which the land was rented for $1,000 per year plus $300 annually from sign rental and $50 monthly in social security. No contact occurred between Anna and Weedon's children or grandchildren from 1932 until 1964. At the time of suit Anna was 73 years old and her income was insufficient for her comfortable maintenance given her age and infirmities. In 1964 the Mississippi State Highway Department acquired a right-of-way across the farm for the U.S. Highway 45 bypass, paying $20,000 of which Anna received $7,500 to construct a new home. A 1970 contract for the sale of soil from the property yielded an additional $1,000 to Anna. At trial the property's commercial value was $168,500 and was projected to reach $336,000 within four years because of the highway construction and the growth of Corinth. Anna filed suit in the Chancery Court of Alcorn County seeking a sale of the property less the house site, with the proceeds invested so that interest would provide her adequate income. The chancellor ordered the sale. The contingent remaindermen Henry Baker, Sarah Baker Lyman, and Louise Virginia Baker Heck took an interlocutory appeal to the Supreme Court of Mississippi to review the decree.
View caseHomeowners faced foreclosure during the Depression and obtained a statutory extension of redemption periods. Lenders argued the extension impaired their fee simple rights under existing mortgages. The Court upheld the statute as a valid exercise of state power over contract remedies.
The Blaisdells executed a mortgage on their property in Minneapolis to the Home Building & Loan Association on August 1, 1928. The mortgage contained a valid power of sale by advertisement. After default, the mortgage was foreclosed and the property sold to the Association on May 2, 1932, for $3700.98. The period of redemption under the law then in effect was set to expire on May 2, 1933. On April 18, 1933, Minnesota enacted Chapter 339 of the Laws of 1933, known as the Mortgage Moratorium Law. The statute authorized district courts to extend the period of redemption from foreclosure sales for such additional time as the court deemed just and equitable, not beyond May 1, 1935, upon condition that the mortgagor pay a reasonable part of the income or rental value toward taxes, insurance, interest, and principal. The Blaisdells applied to the District Court of Hennepin County for an extension of the redemption period. The district court found that the reasonable rental value of the property was $40 per month and the present market value was $6000. It extended the redemption period to May 1, 1935, requiring the Blaisdells to pay $40 per month to the Association. The Supreme Court of Minnesota affirmed the order. The Home Building & Loan Association appealed to the United States Supreme Court, which reviewed the judgment sustaining the statute as applied to the preexisting mortgage.
View caseThe city condemned a strip of railroad land for street widening and paid the railroad one dollar. The railroad claimed the award violated its property rights in the fee. The Court held that just compensation must reflect the value of the interest taken.
The City of Chicago, acting under an 1872 Illinois statute that became part of its charter in 1875, passed an ordinance on October 9, 1880, to open and widen Rockwell Street from West 18th Street to West 19th Street by condemning parcels of land owned by individuals and parts of the right of way of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad Company within the city limits. On November 12, 1890, the city filed a petition in the Circuit Court of Cook County seeking condemnation of the property and asking that just compensation be ascertained by a jury, with the railroad company admitted as a defendant along with other interested parties. The jury awarded one dollar as just compensation to the railroad company for the parts of its right of way to be used for the street, while awarding compensation to individual owners for their parcels. The railroad moved for a new trial, which was overruled, and final judgment was entered in execution of the award. The judgment was affirmed by the Supreme Court of Illinois in 149 Illinois 457. After affirmance the railroad company sued out a writ of error to the United States Supreme Court. The railroad had raised claims under the Fourteenth Amendment in its motion for new trial and in its assignment of errors filed in the state supreme court. The Illinois statute provided no provision for an answer by defendants in condemnation proceedings, but the railroad asserted its federal claims in the written motion to set aside the verdict and grant a new trial.
View caseA feudum simplex passes to lineal and collateral heirs generally while a fee tail passes only to lineal descendants of the first taker.
Yes. Modern law treats a conveyance to a corporation and its successors as creating a fee simple even though the corporation cannot have bodily heirs.
Words of general inheritance such as to B and his heirs create a fee simple absolute unless the conveyance expresses an intent to pass a lesser estate.
…of) value. In any event, we avoid this difficulty in the present case, since the "interest in land" that Lucas has pleaded (a fee simple interest) is an estate with a rich tradition of protection at common law, and since the South Carolina Court of Common Pleas found that the Beachfront Management Act left each of Lucas's…