Rent

RENT. Various species of rent appear in Roman law (q.v.). In English law rent is a certain and periodical payment or service made or rendered by the tenant of a corporeal hereditament and issuing out of (the property of) such hereditament. Its character istics, therefore, are (I) certainty in amount; (2) periodicity in payment or rendering; (3) the fact that rent is yielded and is, therefore, said "to lie in render," as distinguished from profits a prendre in general, which are taken, and are, therefore, said to lie in prendre; (4) that it must issue out of (the profits of) a corporeal hereditament. A rent cannot be reserved out of in corporeal hereditaments. But rent may be reserved out of estates in reversion or remainder (see LAWS RELATING TO REAL PROP ERTY AND CONVEYANCING) which are not purely incorporeal. It is not essential that rent should consist in a payment of money. Apart from the rendering of services, the delivery of hens, horses, wheat, etc., may constitute a rent. But at the present day, rent is generally a sum of money paid for the occupation of land. It is important to notice that this conception of rent was attained at a comparatively late period in the history of the law. The earliest rent seems to have been a form of personal service, and was fixed by custom. Rent service is the oldest kind of existing rent. It is the only one to which the power of distress attaches at common law, giving the landlord a preferential right over other creditors exercisable without the intervention of judicial authority (see DISTRESS). The increasing importance of socage tenure, arising in part from the convenience of paying a certain amount, whether in money or kind, rather than comparatively uncertain services, led to the gradual evolution of the modern view of rent as a sum due by contract between two independent persons.

Classes of Rents.

Rents, as they now exist in England, are divided into two great classes—rent service and rent charge. A rent service is so called because by it a tenure by means of service is created between the landlord and the tenant. The service is now represented by fealty, and is nothing more than nominal. Rent service is said to be incident to the reversion—that is, a grant of the reversion carries the rent with it (see REMAINDER). A power of distress is incident at common law to this form of rent. A rent charge is a grant of an annual sum payable out of lands in which the grantor has an estate. It may be in fee, in tail,

for life—the most common form—or for years. A rent charge may also be granted out of another rent charge (Law of Property Act, 1925, s. 7, 122 [1] ). A rent charge must be created by deed or will, and might be either at common law or under the Statute of Uses (1536). As from Jan. 1, 1926, a rent charge may be created or reserved without the intervention of a use (Law of Property Act, 1925, ss. 65, 187). The grantor has no reversion, and the grantee had at common law no power of distress, though such power was given him by the instrument creating the rent charge. Annual sums charged on land by way of rent charge may be recovered (a) if unpaid for 21 days, by distress; (b) if unpaid for 4o days, by entry into possession of the land and ap propriation of income, and/or demise. By s. 45 of the Conveyanc ing Act, 1881, a power of redemption of certain perpetual rents in the nature of rent charges is given to the owner of the land out of which the rent issues. Rent charges granted since April 26, 1855, otherwise than by marriage settlement or will for a life or lives or for any estate determinable on a life or lives were required, in order to bind lands against purchasers, mortgagees or creditors, to have been registered in the Land Registry in Lin coln's Inn Fields (Judgments Act, 1855). After 1925, however, rent charges of this character became equitable interests only, and as such are overreached by conveyances to purchasers of a legal estate in lands (Law of Property Act, 1925, s. 2). There was no need, therefore, to provide for the registration of such rent charges, and the Land Charges Act, 1925, enacted that after Jan. I, 1926, they should not be entered in the register of annuities (s. 4 [I]). Rent charges in possession charged on land perpetually or for a term of years absolute are "legal estates," registrable as such under the Land Registration Act, 1925 (ss. 2, 3, viii., xxv.) ; and certain classes of rent charge may be entered in the register of land charges under the Land Charges Act, 1925 (s. 0). Rent charges are barred by nonpayment or non-ac knowledgment for 12 years (Limitation Act, 1874). The period of limitation for arrears of rent is six years. As to the colonies see Burge, Col. and For. Laws (by Bewes, iv., pt. 2, 460).