Property law (2022): Future use (control): Rule in Shelley's Case + Doctrine of worthier title

The Rule in Shelley's Case is a rule of law that may apply to certain future interests in real property and trusts created in common law jurisdictions. It was applied as early as 1366 in The Provost of Beverly's Case but in its present form is derived from Shelley's Case (1581), in which counsel stated the rule as follows:

…when the ancestor by any gift or conveyance takes an estate of freehold, and in the same gift or conveyance an estate is limited either mediately or immediately to his heirs in fee simple or in fee tail; that always in such cases, 'the heirs' are words of limitation of the estate, not words of purchase. 

The rule was reported by Lord Coke in England in the 17th century as well-settled law. In England, it was abolished by the Law of Property Act 1925. During the twentieth century, it was abolished in most common law jurisdictions, including the majority of the states of the United States. However, in states where the abrogation has been interpreted to apply only to conveyances made after abrogation, the relevance of the rule today varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and in many states remains unclear.

The 1366 application of the rule in common law closely followed Occam's razor, William of Ockham's articulation of the problem-solving principle that "entities should not be multiplied without necessity." The eponymous litigation was brought about because of a settlement made by Sir William Shelley (1480 to 1549), an English judge, on an estate he purchased when Sion Monastery was dissolved. The decision was rendered by Lord Chancellor Sir Thomas Bromley, who presided over an assembly of all the judges on the King's Bench to hear the case during Easter term 1580 thru 81. The rule existed in English common law long before this case was brought to the court, but Shelley's Case gave the law its most famous application.

In the common law of England, the doctrine of worthier title was a legal doctrine that preferred taking title to real estate by descent over taking title by devise or by purchase. It essentially provides that a remainder cannot be created in the grantor's heirs, at least not by those words.

The rule provided that where a testator undertook to convey an heir the same estate in land that the heir would take under the laws of inheritance, the heir would be adjudged to have taken title to the land by inheritance rather than by the conveyance, because descent through the bloodline was held to be "worthier" than a conveyance through a legal instrument.