local jurisprudence on the subject. It limited the entail to two degrees, counted per capita, between the maker of the entail and the heir; and, therefore, if the testator made A his devisee for life, and after the death of A to B, and after his death to C, and after his death to D, etc., and the estate should descend from A to B, and from B to C, he would hold it absolutely, and the remainder over to D would be void. But the Code Napoleon annihilated the mitigated entailments allowed by the ordinance of 1747, and declared all substitutions or entails to be null and void, even in respect to the first donee.

LECTURE LV.

OF ESTATES FOR LIFE.

1. What is an estate of freehold ?-23, 24.

An estate of freehold is a denomination which applies equally to an estate of inheritance and an estate for life. Sir William Blackstone confines the description of a freehold estate simply to the incident of livery of seisin, which applies to estates of inheritance and estates for life; and as those estates were the only ones which could not be conveyed at common law without the solemnity of livery of seisin, no other estates were properly freehold estates. Any estate of inheritance, or for life, in real property, whether it be a corporeal or an incorporeal hereditament, may justly be denominated a freehold.

2. What, by the ancient law, did a freehold interest confer upon the owner?-24.

A variety of valuable rights and privileges. He became a suitor of the courts, and a judge in the capacity of a juror; he was entitled to vote for members of Parliament, and to defend his title to the land; as owner of the immediate freehold, he was a necessary tenant, to the præcipe in a real action, and he had a right to call in the aid of the reversioner or remainder-man,

when the inheritance was demanded. These rights gave him importance and dignity as a freeholder and freeman.

3. How were estates for life divided?—24.

Into conventional and legal estates. The first are created by the act of parties, and the second by the operation of law.

4. In what two ways may life estates be created ?—25.

1. By express words, as if A conveys land to B for the term of his natural life. 2. They may arise by construction of law, as if A conveys land to B without specifying the time of duration, and without words of limitation. In this last case, B can not have an estate in fee, according to the English law, and according to the law of those parts of the United States which have not altered the common law in this particular, but he will take the largest estate which can possibly arise from the grant, and that is an estate for life.

5. Of what two kinds are life estates ?-25, 26.

Either for a man's own life, or for the life of another person, and in this last case, it is termed an estate pour autre vie, which is the lowest species of freehold, and esteemed of less value than an estate for one's own life.

6. How has the law in this respect proceeded?-26.

It has proceeded upon the known principles of human nature, for, in the ordinary opinion of mankind, as well as in the language of Lord Coke, "an estate for a man's own life is higher than for another man's life."

7. What third branch of life estate may also be added?-26.

An estate for the term of the tenant's own life, and the life of one or more third persons. In this case, the tenant for life has but one freehold limited to own his life and the life of the other party or parties.

8. May not these estates be made to depend upon a contingency, which can happen and determine the estate before the death of the grantee ?-26.

Yes. Thus if an estate be given to a woman dum sola, or

durante viduitate, or to a person so long as he shall dwell in a particular place, or for any other indeterminate period, as a grant of an estate to a man until he shall have received a given sum out of the rents and profits; in all these cases the grantee takes an estate for life, but one that is determinable upon the happening of the event on which the contingency depended. If the tenant for the life of B died in the lifetime of B, the estate was open to any general occupant during the life of B; but if the grant was to A and his heirs during the life of B, the heir took it as a special occupant.

9. How, in New York, is an estate pour autre vie deemed, whether limited to heirs or otherwise?-27.

It is deemed a freehold only during the life of the grantee or devisee, and after his death it is deemed a chattel real.

10. What is tenancy by the curtesy ?-27, 28.

When

. It is an estate for life, created by the act of the law. a man marries a woman, seized, at any time during the coverture, of an estate of inheritance, in severalty, in coparcenary, or in common, and hath issue born alive, during the life of the mother, and which might by possibility inherit the same estate as heir to the wife, and the wife dies in the lifetime of the husband, he holds the land during his life, by the curtesy of England; and it is immaterial whether the issue be living at the time of the seisin, or at the death of the wife, or whether it was born before or after the seisin.

11. How, in South Carolina, is tenancy by curtesy, eo nomine ?

-29.

It has ceased by the provision of an act in 1794, relative to the distribution of intestates' estates, which gives to the husband surviving his wife the same share of her real estate as she would have taken out of his, if left a widow, and that is either one moiety or one third of it, in fee, according to circumstances

12. How in Georgia ?-29.

In Georgia it does not exist; because all marriages since 1785 vest the real equally with the personal estate of the wife in the husband.

29.

13. What four things are requisite to an estate by the curtesy ?—

1. Marriage.

2. Actual seisin of the wife.

3. Issue.

4. Death of the wife.

14. Does the law vest the estate in the husband on the death of the wife, without entry ?-29.

It does.

15. When is his estate initiate and when consummate ?-29, n. (a.)

His estate is initiate on issue had, and consummate on the death of the wife. In Pennsylvania, the husband's curtesy is good by statute passed in 1833, though there be no issue of the marriage.

16. How must the wife, according to the English law, have been seised to entitle the husband to his curtesy ?-29.

In fact and in deed, and not merely of a seisin in law, of an estate of inheritance.

17. What is the law of curtesy in Connecticut ?-30.

The law of curtesy in that State is made to symmetrize with other parts of their system, and ownership without seisin is sufficient to govern the descent or devise of real estate.

18. Has the severity of the ancient law on the right to curtesy been relaxed?-30, n. (b.)

Yes; a constructive seisin of the wife is sufficient to sustain the husband's right to his curtesy, where it is not rebutted by an actual disseisin.

19. Could the husband at common law be tenant by the curtesy of a use; and how is that point now settled in equity?—30.

He could not; but it is now settled in equity that he may be tenant by the curtesy of an equity of redemption, and of lands of which the wife had only a seisin in equity as a cestui que

trust.

20. Is the receipt of the rents and profits a sufficient seisin in the wife ?-31.

It is.

21. What if the lands be devised to the wife for her separate and exclusive use, and with a clear and distinct expression that the husband was not to have any life estate or other interest, but the same was to be for the wife and her heirs?―31.

In that case the Court of Chancery will consider the husband a trustee for the wife and her heirs, and bar him of his curtesy.

22. Is the husband of a mortgagee in fee entitled to his curtesy ? -32.

No.

23. What has this rule now become?—32.

It has now become common learning, and it is well understood that the rights existing in, or flowing from the mortgagee, are subject to the claims of the equity of redemption, so long as the same remains in force.

24. To what estates does curtesy apply?-32.

To qualified as well as to absolute estates in fee.

25. Does the husband forfeit his curtesy by adultery ?—34. No.

26. What is dower, and when and where does it exist ?—35.

It is a species of life estate created by the act of the law, and it exists where a man is seised of an estate of inheritance, and dies in the lifetime of his wife.

27. Of what, in such a case, is she at common law entitled to be endowed ?—35, n. (d.)

Of the third part of all the lands whereof her husband was seised, either in deed or in law, at any time during the coverture, and of which any issue, which she might have had, might by possibility have been heir, and these she held for the term of her