Statute of Uses

Where any person or persons stand or be seised, or at any time hereafter shall happen to be seised, of and in any honours, castles, manors, lands, tenements, rents, services, reversions, remainders, or other hereditaments, to the use, confidence, or trust of any other person or persons, or of any body politic . . . that in every such case, all and every such person and persons, and bodies politic, that have or hereafter shall have any such use, confidence, or trust in fee simple, fee tail, for term of life, or for years, or otherwise, or any use, confidence, or trust in remainder or reverter, shall from henceforth stand and be seised, deemed, and adjudged in lawful seisin, estate, and possession of and in the same honours, castles, manors, lands, tenements, rents, services, reversions, remainders, and hereditaments, with their appurtenances, to all intents, constructions, and purposes in the law, of and in such like estates as they had or shall have in use, trust, or confidence of or in the same.

Editorial note. By the fifteenth century, the feoffment to uses had become the ordinary means of avoiding feudal incidents, of settling land upon women and younger sons, and of devising land in disregard of the common-law rule against devise of freeholds. Chancery enforced the use as a matter of conscience. Henry VIII, deprived of wardship, marriage, and forfeiture, obtained the statute after prolonged negotiation with the Commons.

Editorial note. The declared purpose is to unite the legal and beneficial estates in the cestui que use, restoring the Crown's feudal incidents and returning conveyancing to the common-law courts.

Editorial note. Wherever a person is seised to the use of another, the statute executes the use: the legal seisin is transferred by operation of law to the cestui que use in the same estate as the use he held.

Editorial note. The statute reaches passive uses of freeholds where the feoffee is "seised." It does not reach (i) active uses in which the feoffee has duties to perform, (ii) uses of terms of years or personal property, (iii) uses upon uses (Tyrrel's Case, 2 Dyer 155a (1557)), or (iv) uses of copyhold. These excepted uses became the modern trust.

Editorial note. The statute is complemented by the Statute of Enrolments, 27 Hen. 8, c. 16 (1536), which required bargains and sales of freeholds to be enrolled. Chancery's later willingness to enforce the second use in a use upon use produced the modern trust. The Law of Property Act 1925 repealed the statute in England.

Editorial note. In American jurisdictions the statute (or its state-enacted equivalent) transformed the conveyancing repertoire: bargain-and-sale deeds, covenants to stand seised, and lease-and-release conveyances all operate by executing a use. The trust—cestui que trust of an active or complex use not executed by the statute—is the direct doctrinal heir of the statute's excepted cases.

Editorial note. Chancery began enforcing the second use within a decade of the statute; by the seventeenth century the modern trust was fully recognized, and by the eighteenth century equity treated the trust as a distinct doctrine rather than as an excepted use. Sanders on Uses and Trusts (5th ed. 1844) records the transition.

Editorial note. First, seisin follows use: the legal estate vests where the equitable estate lies. Second, the statute executes only passive uses of freeholds. Third, uses excepted from the statute continue to exist and are enforceable in equity.

Editorial note. Chudleigh's Case, 1 Co. Rep. 113b (1594–95); Tyrrel's Case, 2 Dyer 155a (1557); and Sambach v. Dalston, Tothill 188 (1634) established the boundaries of the statute and identified the residue of uses that continued to be enforced by Chancery.

Editorial note. American conveyancing statutes reproduce the statute's operative effect for bargain-and-sale, covenant-to-stand-seised, and lease-and-release deeds. Modern trust doctrine, whether governed by the Uniform Trust Code or by state common law, descends directly from the excepted uses.

Editorial note. See Statute of Enrolments, 27 Hen. 8, c. 16 (1536); Statute of Wills, 32 Hen. 8, c. 1 (1540); Restatement (Third) of Trusts § 5 (History of the Trust); Uniform Trust Code (2000, as amended).

Editorial note. Every modern American deed of bargain and sale, and every private-express trust of real or personal property, traces its doctrinal lineage to the Statute of Uses.