Shifting use

SHIFTING USE, estates. One which takes effect in derogation of some other estate, and is either limited by the deed creating it, or authorized to be created by some person named in it. This is sometimes called a secondary use.
2. The following is an example: If an estate be limited to A and his heirs, with a proviso that if B pay to A one hundred dollars by a time named, the use to A shall ease, and the estate go to B in fee; the estate is vested in A subject to the shifting or secondary use in fee in B. Again, if the proviso be that C may revoke the use to A, and limit it to B, then A is seised in fee, with a power in C of revocation and limitation of a new use. These shifting uses must be confined within proper limits, so as not to create a perpetuity. 4 Kent, Com. 291; Cornish on Uses, 91; Bac. Ab. Uses and Trusts, K; Co. Litt. 327, a, note Worth on Wills, 419; 2 Bouv. Inst. n. 1890. Vide Use.

References in periodicals archive ?

One risk here is that such an imprecise concept might reveal nothing other than a chronicle of its shifting uses; another is that genius is too transnational an idea to be usefully studied through a single national or linguistic tradition.

Ann Jefferson. Genius in France: An Idea and Its Uses

He argues that the play "explores the shifting uses of such sayings for summing up communal moral and prudential advice" and he revels in the capacity of such rhetorical forms to enthrall, arguing that the play's speakers "employ them as 'trappings' in every sense of the word" (61).

Ira Clark. Rhetorical Readings, Dark Comedies, and Shakespeare's Problem Plays

It would be useful to provide a careful tracing of the shifting uses of the term as it has changed over time and as different users have entered the scene.