The Ohio Supreme Court ruled that a reversionary interest in a deed donating a park to the city was not extinguished by operation of the state marketable title act. Cleveland Botanical Garden v. Worthington Drewien, 2022 Ohio LEXIS 2153 (Ohio 2022)....
In Jordan v. Parker, 2022 WL 17998227 (Tex. Dec. 30, 2022), the Texas Supreme Court held that a conveyance of a life estate actually conveyed a fee simple since the remainders were subject to alteration or even complete divestment by the life estate owner. In this case, a man devised his entire estate to his widow for life with remainders in their children, but the devise...
The Massachusetts courts say that there is no duty to mitigate damages in commercial leases but they sure look like they recognize such a duty when a lease has an acceleration clause (requiring the full remaining rent for the rest of the lease to be paid if rent payments are missed). In the case of Cummings Props., LLC v. Hines, 2022 WL 17409280 (Mass. App. Ct. 2022), a commercial tenant...
Most courts granted an easement by necessity when an owner severs its land and leaves a parcel without access to a public road. The easement allows passage over land that had been connected to the landlocked parcel before it became landlocked. The courts differ on whether this is a mandatory rule of law (owners are not allowed to create land to which there is no access) or a default rule based on the implied intent of the parties, in which case the...
A Texas court has held that an option to purchase an interest in land for a fixed price of $50,000 that would last for 100 years was an invalid and unreasonable restraint on alienation of land. Tiner v. Johnson, 2022 WL 2062478 (Tex. Ct. App....
New York retains a version of the traditional rule against perpetuities. Like most states, it has classified options to purchase and rights of first refusal as "executory interests" subject to the rule against perpetuities. They therefore must vest (if at all) within 21 years of their creation, or within 21 years of the death of a named person in the conveyance or during the lifetime of a named person. The latter was the case in...
The Virginia Court held that a future interest requiring forfeiture of title if property was not used to church purposes was a valid possibility of reverter, and was not an invalid or unreasonable restraint on alienation of land. Canova Land & Inv...
Because the Texas partition statute requires the proceeds of a partition sale to be divided "according to [the owners'] just rights therein," joint tenants were entitled to 50% of the sale proceeds even though one of the co-owners had used his own funds to purchase the property. ...
California passed a statute prohibited private transfer fees unless used exclusively to support the encumbered property or cultural, education, charitable, recreational, environmental, conservation, or similar activities. Cal. Civ. Code §1098.6 (2018 Cal. Stat. ch. 306).
In White v. Auger,2019 N.H. LEXIS 4 (N.H. 2019), the grantor conveyed property to a grantee "on condition that" the grantee build on it (or on adjacent land) and live there (within 10 years) created a fee simple subject to executory limitation. State statutes abolished possibilities of reverter, rights of entry, and...