Doper Common Lawyers - Use on the Use - Small words please!

Factual Questions
1

Hi all,

Just starting equity.

So.

Feoffement with livery of seisen, got it.

Feoffee on use, got it. Benefit of someone else.

Cesti que use, got it. The person benefitted. Understand why - primogeniture, dower, etc.

Use upon use to avoid to avoid tax (until the Statue of Use)…not a clue. When it gets to be use upon use, I can’t follow at all what anybody is on about. I get that this is the basic start of trust law, and that the use evolved into the trust, and that somehow there’s a limit of five in the use upon use scenario. I tried to draw it out, and no good.

I must say this is background and will likely not be examined, but it’s making me itchy cause I don’t get it.

Help?

2

I didn’t even try to get it. I just took it as interesting historical background to trusts.

3

You actually bothered to read this shy? I spent the lecture reading a John Grisham novel.

4

What you are saying sounds a little like English, but not so close I can understand it.

5

That’s because it’s not English: it’s Law French :slight_smile:

6

Well I think “use” would be latin (well, that’s what Osborn says).

7

OED says “use” came into English from Anglo-French and Old French, though, of course, ultimately it does come from the Latin “usus”.

8

Feeoffee to uses: A person to whom (before the statute of uses) land was conveyed “for the use” of a third person. He held the nominal or legal title, while the third person was entitled to the enjoyment of the estate. (Which means he was trustee for a third party beneficiary.)

An English statute enacted in 1536 directed against the practice of creating uss in lands, and which converted the purely equitable title of persons entitled to a use into a legal title. The statute is said to “execute the use,” that is, it abolishes the intervening estate of the feoffee to uses. (“Feoffee” being he to whom the fee is conveyed.)

9

So, for those of us who don’t intend to retire to Blackacre: I guess these terms aren’t used much in contemporary American law?

I’m going back to the hyperreals. They make more sense than just about any of this.

10

No, they’re not.

11

No, they aren’t used today at all, sorry I wasn’t clear - it’s maybe half a lecture of stuff and this is one point I just didn’t get and can’t seem to get it.

Essentially they stacked up the use somehow, and I don’t understand it - the Statue of Uses abolished it anyway.

My book says use comes from the Latin ‘opus’ which means ‘for the benefit of’ but my Latin is horrible 20 years after I ever needed to use it, and I don’t vouch for it’s correctness.

As AK84 says, I would probably be better to spend that lecture time texting my husband and surruptitiously poking around the internet. I didn’t, and now I’ve run across it again. (I first ran across this in real property as an intro to trusts and now in equity I’ve got nothing but trusts so it’s turned up again.)

Thanks for the help anyway, as I say it’s not important. We won’t be examined on it.

Although all this background is fascinating for a law/history nerd. I was reading about the Islamic waqf and it’s realtion to the evolution of modern trusts. And the very fact I find that interesting probably tells you how desperately I need a life. :slight_smile:

12

I’ve always wanted to visit that statue.

13

Ya, it’s a fabulous one. Stacked up, with stuff on it.

(D’oh.)

14

I never even heard those words studying English law. Why are they teaching you that? Equity gets mind-bending enough as it is.

15

I don’t know? I first got the concepts in Real Property, as I said. I go to an Australian uni.

It’s interesting, at least.

16

As a precursor to trusts, I guess.
The things people will try to get around paying tax. Like inventing new law. :wink:

17

I ended up taking several estate and trust classes, just because I found the stuff fascinating. Ultimately, I don’t have a tax mind, though, and in practice, trusts/estates are bound up with tax law, so it never became my practice.

Also, I don’t think I ever heard the “use upon use” terminology. (And we did occasionally reenact foeffment with livery of siesin – when someone was handing out assignments, for example. Law nerds unite!)

18

Ok, so I humbled myself to ask the prof (I seriously don’t like the guy, he’s the only one I’ve had so far that makes me roll my eyes).

Use on use. Instead of use, think of the word trustee.

A gives land to B on trust to C. When B dies, C gets the land. Pre 1660, this meant that there were feudal dues (taxes) to pay on the passing of the property via secession.

So to get around that, A gives land to B, C, D, E, F, and G on trust for H’s heirs and assigns. B to F are varying ages. They are Joint Tenants. Due to the way that works, the property rights vest in the next person when one of them dies. When the last trustee dies, then the property passes to H or his heirs and assigns. Then the tax is due, but it’s delayed.

Henry VIII had a lot of weddings to pay for, so he made laws to prevent this.

So clever lawyers stacked the use. So it was from A to B and B to C and C to D and D to E for the benefit of F or his heirs and assigns. So the A made B trustee to C and C trustee to D and so on. You could do this in a chain of up to five people (before it got to crazy to keep track of.)

Equity courts after 1660 said sure, this is legal, and hey, doesn’t matter anyway cause no more feudal dues.

Thus, Statute of Uses.

I think this is right, it looks like what he drew on the board. It still ever so slightly hurts my head.

And Campion, re-enacting feoffement with livery of seisin is probably the coolest thing I have heard of law students actually doing, that’s just awesome!