This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. Learn more

Law Notes Property Law Notes

Legal Estates And Legal Interests In Land Notes

Updated Legal Estates And Legal Interests In Land Notes

Property Law Notes

Property Law

Approximately 103 pages

In depth revision notes that include lecturer and academic commentary as well as exam tips. Colorful and highlighted with illustrative pictures and diagrams. Visually attractive. ...

The following is a more accessible plain text extract of the PDF sample above, taken from our Property Law Notes. Due to the challenges of extracting text from PDFs, it will have odd formatting:

Legal Estates and Legal Interests in Land

For example: B, a law lecturer promises A Ltd, her publisher, that all her students will buy a copy of the textbook written by B. Does A Ltd then have a right that all B’s students will buy the book?

Answer: No as students weren’t party to the agreement. Right= a personal right not a property right therefore not enforceable against students.

Property rights prima facie bind the whole world and strangers from its creation and is respected by the state+ if owner becomes insolvent, person who right is transferred to is protected from creditors.

Property right= stronger than a personal right.

Distinction Between Personal and Property Rights:

Two types of rights in land;

  1. Personal Rightsrights in personam: rights which only affect the parties that originally created the right.

  2. Proprietary Rights – rights in rem: rights capable of affecting third parties, bind the world.

Numerus Clauses: Limited number of property rights that the law will recognize, can’t just turn personal rights into property rights, up to the law to decide which category your right falls into.

Logic of numerus clauses principle- If can create random property right whenever we want= would become difficult for a third party who later acquires it to know what duties they bear = uncertainty.

Hill v.Tupper (1863):

– proprietors owned a canal, made a promise to H for exclusive right to put pleasure boats on the canal – T started doing this as well, H objected that this interfered with his property right – issue was whether this was a valid property right – held that it was not – one cannot create property rights unconnected with the land – it was only a personal right against the company, could not bind the world. Mr.Hill = personal right, permission/license to put his boat on the canal= not a property right therefore couldn’t bind third parties so if he wanted remedies would have to seek it from canal company.

A X: also puts boats on canal

A’s promise to give

B an exclusive right

to put boats on canal

Can B assert a right against X?

B

Does the contract between A and B give B a property right in A’s land? No!

Pollock CB at 127-8:

“It is not competent to create rights unconnected with the use and enjoyment of land, and annex them to it so as to constitute a property in the grantee [B]. This grant merely operates as a licence or covenant on the part of the grantors [A], and is binding on them as between themselves and [B], but gives [B] no right of action in his own name for any infringement of the supposed exclusive right.”

“A new species of incorporeal hereditament [ie a legal property right] cannot be created at the will and pleasure of the owner of property, but he must be content to accept the estate and the right to dispose of it subject to the law as settled by decisions or controlled by acts of parliament.”

Keppell v Bailey (1834):

A A sells ironworks to C C

A’s promise to B that

A and future owners

of A’s ironworks

will acquire limestone

from B’s quarry only

Can B assert a right against C?

B

Does the contract between A and B give B a property right in A’s land? No! It was not open to A to grant B a new legal property right which would bind C.

Lord Brougham LC at 535:

“There are certain known incidents to property and its enjoyment; among others, certain burdens wherewith it may be affected, or rights which may be created and may be enjoyed over it by parties other than the owner; all which incidents are recognised by the law…All these kinds of property, however, all these holdings, are well known to the law and familiarly dealt with by its principles. But it must not therefore be supposed that incidents of a novel kind can be devised and attached to property at the fancy and caprice of any owner. It is clearly inconvenient both to the science of the law and to the public weal that such a latitude should be given … great detriment would arise and much confusion of rights if parties were allowed to invent new modes of holding and enjoying real property, and to impress upon their lands and tenements a peculiar character, which should follow them into all hands, however remote.”

There is a need to keep land freely marketable and alienable= why one can’t personally determine property rights, up to the courts to decide.

Limits on the content of legal property rights

Law of Property Act 1925, s 1:

S. 1 recognises only two categories of legal property rights in land: legal estates in land and legal interests in land. Additionally, it stipulates that any other type of property right must take effect in equity.

Historically= Could create a legal life estate- property ownership= limited to a lifetime but this impeded marketability of land as ownership= not indefinite, only span of someone’s lifetime. (Now not on list of legal property right but under equity.)

S.1(1) – Legal Estates:

(1) The only estates in land which are capable of subsisting or being conveyed or created at law are –

  1. An estate in fee simple absolute in possession;

  2. A term of years absolute.

Legal estates in land
Name Content
Freehold Ownership without limit of time
Lease Ownership for a limited period

Why?= to facilitate the buying and selling of land.

‘‘freehold’ = “fee simple absolute in possession”. Right to possess the land.

s. 1(2) – Legal Interests

(2) The only interests or charges in or over land which are capable of subsisting or of being conveyed or created at law are –

(a) An easement, right or privilege in or over land for an interest equivalent to an estate in fee simple absolute in possession or a term of years absolute;

(b) A rentcharge in possession issuing out of or charged on land being either perpetual or for a term of years absolute;

(c) A charge by way of legal mortgage;

(d) Any other similar charge on land which is not created by an instrument;

(e) Rights of entry exercisable over or in respect of a legal term of years absolute, or annexed, for any purpose, to a...

Buy the full version of these notes or essay plans and more in our Property Law Notes.