CONDITIONAL LIMITATION. A fee simple estate limited or qualified (a) so as to come to an end on the happening of a collateral event, or (b) so as to shift from one owner to another on such an event. The expression condi tional limitation is used in both these senses by different law--writers of great authority, and it is therefore impossible to affix to it a precise defini tion. The first use of the phrase identifies it with the limited or qualified fee simple, as a gift of land to A and his heirs so long as they shall continue to live on the premises, or so long as Saint Paul's Church shall stand, or the happening of any other event. Under the early common law the donor of such an estate had an interest left—notwithstanding the estate eonveyed was a fee simple—known as a 'possibility of re verter,' and, upon the happening, of the event specified in the deed, the property would revert or return to the donor or his heirs. This eontin gent interest remaining, in the donor of a qualified tee has been referred to the feudal relation of lord and tenant. which might subsist between the grantor and grantee of a fee, and it has been supposed that the statute Quia Emptores (1290), which did away with this feudal relation, thereby destroyed also the grantor's possibility of re verter, and converted every qualified fee into an absolute fee. But it has been held, nevertheless, in two States (New York and Massachusetts) of the United States, that qualified fees of this type are still good, and that they will revert to the grantor and his heirs on the happening of the event on which they were conditioned, and these decisions are likely to be followed in the United States. But neither at the common law nor to
day has the grantor of such a fee any interest which he is capable of alienating to any other person prior to the return of the estate to him.
The second meaning of the expression condi tional limitation makes it a convenient phrase for the commoner terms executory devise and shift ing use. While at the common law a gift of a fee simple—even though qualified as above de scribed—was supposed to exhaust the whole power of alienation, if not the entire interest, of the donor, leaving him no capacity to give the property over, on the happening of a future con tingency, to another; yet, as a result of the Statute of Uses (passed in 1527) and the Statute of Wills (enacted in 1532) it became possible to make a fee which should, upon a specified future event, shift to another. Thus, if land be devised by will to X and his heirs on condition that they shall forever maintain their citizenship in New York, with the further proviso that in the event of a failure to comply with the condition within the lives of the donor's children the property should 20 over to a charity, the last-mentioned gift might take effect as an executory devise, or conditional limitation on the prior gift. Such limitations on fees are now very common, and may, under modern statutes, usually be effected by a simple deed of grant, without invoking the aid of the Statute of Uses. See DEVISE; ESTATE; FEE SIMPLE; FEUDAL SYSTEM; SUBINFEUDATION: USE; WILL; and the authorities referred to under those titles.