How do ensure partition attempts are simultaneous? For example, let’s say on a common document seeking to partition, the first one to sign has lost their right, the whole belongs to the second one, and his signature does not matter. (The key here being “the whole of it goes to the other”, meaning When A signs, B gets everything and so it’s not like B’s half has to go to A when B signs). If the will explicitly wanted to continue the condition once one heir owned everything - then it would have had to say so, yes? And it says “the whole”, not “his half” reverts.
Ah, lawyers…
And - insn’t a church with no foreseeable demise a perpetuity problem?
I’ve definitely ran into weird clauses dealing with conditional rights over property both personally and ran across it in the news.
One example I’m familiar with is when all-female Sweetbriar College started the process of shutting itself down. One restriction that came up is that the woman who willed the land the college was built on had stipulated that the land must be used for a college. It was stated that if the college shut down the land would revert to her other heirs.
On a personal level my aunt divorced her first husband when she was in her 50s, and entered a sort of common law marriage (aka shacked up–this wasn’t in a state that had common law marriages) with a man about 20 years her senior. He proposed to her a few times but she just wasn’t interested in marriage. He knew that he would predecease her (most likely), and if she had agreed to marriage he made it known she’d inherit everything (he wasn’t cash rich, but he had a nice little farm house and a lot of acreage.) Since she wouldn’t marry him, he instead structured the will so that she had right of residency on the property for the remainder of her life, but that when she died his two sons would get the property. I think in that case legally she was just given a sort of leasehold for life at no cost, but the sons actually owned the land, they just didn’t have legal authority to evict her. As I remember it, when the old man died her sons did make trouble over it, and I’m not 100% clear on the details, but she still lives there now 20 years later.
This arrangement is not unusual - life tenancy or life estate I think. Quite common, and for exactly this situation. A person may want their blood heirs (not their partner’s family) to inherit, but does not want to have the partner booted out during their lifetime. Some jurisdictions (so I’ve heard, for Canada) have a serious issue with a will that does not properly provide for a spouse (or partner?) although if the state does not recognize a common law arrangement in any way, I assume this would be irrelevant.
I would imagine the words we are using such as “seeking” “attempting” or “trying” to partition the land would be construed by a court to mean taking a formal action by filing a petition. Merely talking to a lawyer or even putting your signature on a document would not be sufficient until you actually tried by starting a legal process.
As far as the church, the Rule Against Perpetuities would apply, and I was in error. The RAP is a damn hard thing to grasp and one court even held that it was not malpractice for a lawyer to fail to understand it.
However, the rule does NOT apply to possibilities of reversion:
O to A so long as no alcohol is sold on the premises.
Three hundred years later, A’s successor in interest sells alcohol on the premises, the land then reverts to O, who is long since dead, and goes to O’s living heirs.