Conditional Fee - Definition - Law Dictionary Home Dictionary Definition conditional-fee

Definition :

Conditional fee. This species of formerly inheritable freehold (now, equitable interest, except under (English) Law of Property Act, 1925, s. 8) is marked, as to its duration or time of continuance, by an event beyond which it is not to endure. The event is the qualification which gives a name to this estate, and ascertains its determination. A fee qualified is frequently called a fee base, i.e., impure, defective, and circumscribed. There is hardly any event, provided it be lawful, and do not violate the rule against perpetuity, which may not be made the cause of the determination of this fee.

The following events are specimens of qualifications, which may be expressly annexed to this estate.

A limitation to A. and his heirs--

(1) Peers of the realm;

(2) Lords of the manor of Blackacre;

(3) Tenants of the manor of Dale;

(4) During the time whilst a particular tree shall stand;

(5) Till the marriage of a certain person takes place;

(6) Till certain debts be paid;

(7) Till default be made in payment of a given debt, at a certain time;

(8) Until a minor shall attain his majority.

When these events terminate, or the acts are done or omitted to be done, according to the meaning of the given restrictions, the fee qualified will cease; but it may possibly, as is obvious, continue for ever, in those instances especially where the qualification is not certain to take place. The estates will then continue precisely in the same manner, as if no collateral event, giving to the estate a determinate character, had been annexed to it. A base-fee may arise in the absence of any express qualification when it is made determinable by construction of law, on a certain event, such as an estate restrained to some particular heirs, exclusive of others, as to the heirs of a man's body, by which only his lineal descendants were admitted, in exclusion of collateral; see BASE FEE. A qualified fee confers a limited power of alienation, entitling the owner to give an interest of the same extent and continuance only to another person which he has in himself. So that the estate will, notwithstanding the transfer, be determinable, and, into whose hands soever it may come, will cease on the happening of the events upon which such qualified fee depends.