LIFE-RENT

1 definition found

From Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Revised 6th Ed (1856) [bouvier]:

  LIFE-RENT, Scotch law. A right to use and enjoy a thing during life, the 
  substance of it being preserved. A life-rent cannot, therefore, be 
  constituted upon things which perish in the use; and though it may upon 
  subjects which gradually wear out by time, as household furniture, &c., yet 
  it is generally applied to heritable subjects. Life-rents are divided into 
  conventional and legal. 


       2.-1. The conventional are either simple or by reservation. A simple 
  life-rent, or by a separate constitution, is that which is granted by the 
  proprietor in favor of another. A life-rent by reservation is that which a 
  proprietor reserves to himself, in the same writing by which he conveys the 
  fee to another. 
       3.-2. Life-rents, by law, are the terce and the courtesy. See Terce; 
  Courtesy.