Future Interests Restated: Tradition Versus Clarification and Reform

Abstract

Here in this third of five projected volumes of restatement of property "law as it is"—that is, of rules which purportedly predict what an intelligent court will do if properly harangued—the American Law Institute brings to a close its clear expression and authoritative crystallization of our traditional confusion about Future Interests. Having already in Volumes I and II presented its rules about the "creation" and "characteristics" of the complementary freehold estates and about the "types" and "characteristics" of future interests, the Institute now adds, after much further meticulous grinding of its elaborate machinery, a formidable blackletter-comment-illustration distillate of rules about the "creation" of future interests and about "the special topics of Interests of Expectant Distributees and Powers of Appointment." Its purpose is still—this volume refers back to Volume I—to achieve "a correct statement of the general law of the United States" and hence to promote "certainty and clarity" and prevent a supersession of "our common law system" by "rigid legislative codes."