Blackacre

Blackacre, Whiteacre, Greenacre, Brownacre, and variations are the placeholder names used for fictitious estates in land.

The names are used by professors of law in common law jurisdictions, particularly in the area of real property and occasionally in contracts, to discuss the rights of various parties to a piece of land. A typical law school or bar exam question on real property might say:

Adam, owner of a fee simple in Blackacre, conveyed the property "to Bill for life, remainder to Charles, provided that if any person should consume alcohol on the property before the first born son of Charles turns twenty-one, then the property shall go to Dwight in fee simple." Assume that neither Bill, Charles, or Dwight is an heir of Adam, and that Adam's only heir is his son, Edward. Discuss the ownership interests in Blackacre of Adam, Bill, Charles, Dwight and Edward.

Where more than one estate is needed to demonstrate a point – perhaps relating to a dispute over boundaries, easements or riparian rights – a second estate will usually be called Whiteacre, a third, Greenacre, and a fourth, Brownacre.

Jesse Dukeminier, author of one of the leading series of textbooks on property, traces the use of Blackacre and Whiteacre for this purpose to a 1628 treatise by Sir Edward Coke. Dukeminier suggests that the term might originate with references to colors associated with certain crops ("peas and beans are black, corn and potatoes are white, hay is green"), or with the means by which rents were to be paid, with black rents payable in produce and white rents in silver. A 1790 treatise by Francis Buller similarly uses these placeholder names, stating: "If A. have Black Acre and C. have White Acre, and A. has a way over White Acre to Black Acre, and then purchases White Acre, the way will be extinct; and if A. afterwards enfeoff C. of White Acre without excepting the road, it is gone".

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