USANCE, in commerce, is a determi nate time fixed for the payment of bills • of exchange, reckoned either from the day of the bills being accepted, or from the day of their date ; and thus called, because regulated by the usage and cus- 4 tom of the places whereon they are drawn. See EXCHANGE.
USE, in law, is a trust and confidence reposed in another who is tenant of the land, that he shall dispose of the land, ac cording to the intention of testacy Sue use or him to whose use it was granted, and suffer him to take the profits.
By statute 27, Henry VIII. c. 10. com monly called the statute of uses, or the statute for transferring uses into posses sion, the cestuy gue use is considered as the real owner of the estate ; whereby it is enacted, that when any person is seised of lands to the use of another, the person entitled to the itse in fee-simple, fee-tail, for life or years, or otherwise, shall stand and be seised or possessed of the land, in the like estate as he bath of the use, trust, or confidence. And thereby the
act makes cestuy gee use complete owner both at law and in equity. This is one of the most important statutes in the law respecting conveyances, and it is as it were the hinge, upon which all the sys tem of conveyancing turns. It is extreme ly difficult to explain its effect in this dic tionary, but it may be important to say, that in any conveyance which operates under the statute of uses, it is necessary to declare a use, as to say the estate is given to A B, to the use of A B, without which the use, that is, all the interest in the estate, results to the donor. A trust is now what a use was formerly. See TRUST.