perpetuity
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perpetuity
n. forever. (See: in perpetuity, rule against perpetuities)
perpetuity
noun boundlessness, ceaselessness, constant progression, continuance, continuation, continued existence, continuous time, endless duration, endless time, endlessness, eternity, everlasting, forever, incessancy, infinite duration, infiniteness, infinity, perenniality, permanence, perpetuation, perpetuitas, time without end, unintermitted continuance, uninterrupted existenceAssociated concepts: after-born children, in perpetuity, lives in being, period of perpetuities, restraint on alienation, rule against perpetuities
PERPETUITY, estates. Any limitation tending to take the subject of it out of
commerce for a longer period than a life or lives in being, and twenty-one
years beyond; and in case of a posthumous child, a few months more, allowing
for the term of gestation; Randall on Perpetuities, 48; or it is such a
limitation of property as renders it unalienable beyond the period allowed
by law. Gilbert on Uses, by Sugden, 260, note.
2. Mr. Justice Powell, in Scattergood v. Edge, 12 Mod. 278,
distinguished perpetuities into two sorts, absolute and qualified; meaning
thereby, as it is apprehended, a distinction between a plain, direct and
palpable perpetuity, and the case where an estate is limited on a
contingency, which might happen within a reasonable compass of time, but
where the estate nevertheless, from the nature of the limitation, might be
kept out of commerce longer than was thought agreeable to the policy of the
common law. But this distinction would not now lead to a better
understanding or explanation of the subject; for whether an estate be so
limited that it cannot take effect, until a period too much protracted, or
whether on a contingency which may happen within a moderate compass of time,
it equally falls within the line of perpetuity and the limitation is
therefore void; for it is not sufficient that an estate may vest within the
time allowed, but the rule requires that it must. Randall on Perp. 49. Vide
Cruise, Dig. tit. 32, c. 23; 1 Supp. to Ves. Jr. 406; 2 Ves. Jr. 357; 3
Saund. 388 h. note; Com. Dig. Chancery, 4 G 1; 3 Chan. Cas. 1; 2 Bouv. Inst.
n. 1890.