Contingent Legacy - Definition - Law Dictionary Home Dictionary Definition contingent-legacy

Definition :

Contingent legacy, one bequeathed on a contingency; e.g., if the legatee attain twenty-one.

The contingency may only relate to the disposal of the fund, or it may relate to the position or existence of the beneficiary; in the first case as in a bequest to be paid or payable to A. when he shall attain twenty one years, the legacy is vested and not contingent and although he may never attain the age his personal representatives will be entitled to the legacy, but if the words 'paid' or 'to be payable' are omitted and the legacy is to A. on attaining twenty-one years of age his personal representatives will not be entitled to the legacy if he dies under that age. These are said to be positive rules of construction, Williams on Executors and Administrators, 12th Edn. P. 794, but the prima facie inference may be negatived by the context of the will taken as a whole. There are certain other guides to construction, e.g., in general, a gift of interest in the interim or a direction to pay maintenance points to a vested and not a contingent gift and where a previous interest is given to one for life and after his decease to another, the interest of the second legatee is vested even if he predeceases the first; legacies which are charged on land, as a rule, however, are not vested until the contingency happens, but this last rule is not applied to proceeds of sale of land and in the case of a direction to pay out of a mixed fund where the proceeds of sale are to be mixed with personalty the legacy is payable according to the rules applicable to personalty. Where legacies are charged on both real and personal estate the rule relating to real estate only arises after the personal estate has been exhausted.

The rule that contingent gifts which cannot vest within a life or lives in being and 21 years after-wards are void not only in regard to gifts to particular persons but in regard to the whole class if it includes some in whom the gift would not vest within the period has been mitigated by s. 163 of the (English) L.P. Act, 1925, which provides that incases where more than 21 years of age of an unborn donee has been fixed for vesting, the gift is to take effect as if 21 years had been fixed. See also MAINTENANCE and PERPETUITIES.