FEE AND LIFE-RENT (in the law of Scotland)—the first of which is the full right of proprietorship, the second the limited right of usufruct during life—may be held together, or may co-exist in different persons at the same time. The settling of the limits of the rights which in the latter case they respectively confer, is of very great prac tical importance, and, from the loose way in which both expressions have been used by conveyancers, by no means free from difficulty. " In common language," says Mr. Bell, " they are quite distinct; life-rent importing a life-interest merely, fee a full right of property in reversion after a life-rent. But the proper meaning of the word life-rent has sometimes been confounded by a combination with the word fee, so as in some degree to lose its appropriate sense, and occasionally to import a fee. This seems to have begun chiefly in destinations ' to husband and wife, in conjunct fee and life-rent and children in fee;! where the true meaningis, that each spouse has a joint life-rent while both live, but each las a possible-fee, as it is uncertain which: is to survive. The same
confusion of terms came to be extended to the case of a destination to parent and child to A. B. in life-rent, and the heirs of the marriage in fee '—where the word life-rent was held to confer a fee on the parent. It came gradually to be held as the technical meaning of the word 'life-rent to a parent, with fee to his children nascituri,' that the word life-rent meant a fee in the father. Finally, the expression came to be held as strictly limited to its proper meaning by the accompanying word allenarly,' or some similar expression of restriction; or where the fee was given to children nazi and nomi natim; there being in that case no necessity to divert the word life-rent from its proper meaning, or, on a similar principle, where the settlement was by means of a trust created to take up the fee." (Prin. s. 1712.)