Perpetuity

Perpetuity ("unlimited duration"). The rule against perpetuities, or the doctrine of remoteness, applies to the corpus of property, real or personal, and whether limited by deed or will; it lays down that the vesting of property cannot be postponed or the alienation of it restricted beyond a life or any number of lives in being, and twenty-one years from the death of the surviving life. The principal exceptions to the rule are estates tail, charitable dispositions, and grants of property to paiticular families for public service.