Freehold estates: fee simple and life estates

Freehold means ownership of indefinite duration

A freehold estate has an indefinite duration: fee simple may continue indefinitely, while a life estate ends at a death whose date is unknown. A fixed-term lease is a leasehold.

Fee simple absolute is the broadest private ownership estate: potentially perpetual, inheritable, and transferable during life or at death, subject to applicable law. It remains subject to taxes, zoning, liens, and valid private restrictions. These burdens do not themselves make it a life estate.

A defeasible fee can end because of a condition in the grant. In the standard distinction, a fee simple determinable ends automatically upon the stated terminating event. A fee simple subject to condition subsequent instead gives the holder of a right of entry the ability to seek termination after breach. Actual deed language and applicable law control.

Life estates divide present and future ownership

An ordinary life estate lasts for the life tenant's life. The life tenant possesses and uses the property, generally bears ordinary maintenance and property taxes, and must not commit waste harming the future interest. Transferring the life estate does not extend it. If Rosa conveys her estate for her own life to Ben, Ben's estate still ends at Rosa's death. An estate measured by a life other than its holder's is a life estate pur autre vie.

A grant to Rosa for life, then to Maya, gives Maya a remainder. A grant to Rosa for life that leaves the future interest with the grantor creates a reversion in the grantor. Both follow the life estate; the distinction is who holds the future interest.

Florida deed rules

Under Fla. Stat. § 689.10, words such as heirs, successors, or fee simple are unnecessary to pass the whole estate the grantor can convey, unless a contrary intention appears. This does not enlarge the grantor's interest.

Florida prohibits entailed estates. Fla. Stat. § 689.14 converts an attempted estate tail into a life estate in the first taker with the statutory remainder to lineal descendants. Fla. Stat. § 689.17 abolishes the Rule in Shelley's Case: a grant for life with remainder to the life tenant's heirs creates a life estate with remainder per stirpes to lineal descendants living when the estate begins, subject to opening for descendants who come into being during the life estate.