Perpetuity period

The rule against perpetuities is a rule in the common law that forbids legal instruments (usually a will) from tying up property for too long a time beyond the lives of people living at the time the instrument was written. Specifically, the rule forbids a person from creating future interests (traditionally contingent remainders and executory interests) in property that would vest at a date beyond that of the lifetimes of those then living plus 21 years. In essence, the rule prevents a person from putting qualifications and criteria in his or her will that will continue to control or affect the distribution of assets long after he or she has died, a concept often referred to as control by the "dead hand" or "mortmain".

The basic elements of the rule against perpetuities originated in the 17th century, and were "crystallized" into a single rule in the 19th century. The rule's traditional formulation was given in 1886 by the American scholar John Chipman Gray:

No interest is good unless it must vest, if at all, not later than twenty-one years after some life in being at the creation of the interest.

The rule against perpetuities serves a number of purposes. First, English courts have long recognized that allowing owners to attach long-lasting contingencies to their properties can negatively impact the ability of future generations to freely buy and sell the properties, since few people would be willing to buy a property that had unresolved issues regarding its ownership hanging over it. Second, judges often had concerns about the dead being able to impose excessive limitations on the ownership and use of property by those still living. For this reason, the rule only allows testators (will-makers) to put contingencies on ownership upon the following generation plus 21 years. Lastly, the rule against perpetuities was sometimes used to prevent very large, possibly aristocratic estates from being kept in one family for more than one or two generations at a time.

The rule has become famous as one of the most difficult topics encountered by law school students. It is notoriously difficult to properly apply, as pointed out by a 1961 decision of the Supreme Court of California which held that it was not legal malpractice for an attorney to draft a will that inadvertently violated the rule against perpetuities. Therefore, in the United States it has been abolished by statute in Alaska, Idaho, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and South Dakota. The Uniform Statutory Rule Against Perpetuities validates non-vested interests that would otherwise be void as violating the common law rule if that interest actually vests within 90 years of its creation; it has been enacted in 29 states (Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Kansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia), the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, and is currently under consideration in New York. Other jurisdictions apply the "wait and see" or "cy-près doctrine" that validates contingent remainders and executory interests that would be void under the traditional rule in certain circumstances. These doctrines have also been codified in the United Kingdom by the 1964 statute.

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