Perpetuity

Perpetuity, in English law, means an arrangement whereby property is tied up—i.e. rendered inalienable—for all time or for a very long period. Testators and settlers have always been tempted by family pride to restrain their successors from parting with settled property, especially land; but the policy of the law requires that owners should be free to dispose of their property, and perpetuities are sternly discouraged. Land was formerly tied up by means of Entails (q.v.) and by the creation of remainders, but these forms of disposition were brought within strict rule. Trusts were then used to evade the rules of common law, but the equity courts gradually evolved a rule that property should not be tied up unless for the lives of persons in being and twenty-one years beyond; any disposition which may possibly postpone the vesting of property beyond that period is void. The rule left a settler free, by selecting the lives of young persons, to tie up his property for eighty or ninety years. Thellusson, a London banker, attempted to create an immense fortune by directing that the income of his property should go on accumulating during the lives of his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, living at the time of his death, and for twenty-one years beyond. This led to the passing of what is called the Thellusson Act in 1800; the act restricts accumulation of income (except for payment of debts, &c.) to a period of twenty-one years from the death of the settler, or some other of the limited periods described in the act. It is to be observed that trusts for public and charitable purposes are not, as a general rule, within the scope of the law against perpetuities. In the United States the rules developed by the English courts have been generally adopted as the basis of the law; several states have legislated on the subject, and in some cases the local law against perpetuities has been made a part of the state constitution.