Real estate glossary and exam guide
Defeasible fee: name the condition, the ending and the next holder
A deed gives a town land for a library, but continued ownership depends on its use. Does title return automatically, does someone have to elect to reclaim it, or does it shift to another named person? Those are three different arrangements. Read how the estate ends before choosing its name.
Last reviewed:
The short answer
A defeasible fee is a fee-simple estate that can end under a valid condition or limitation. A fee simple determinable ends automatically under its limitation, with a possibility of reverter retained by the grantor. A fee simple subject to a condition subsequent continues unless the holder lawfully exercises the retained right of entry, also called a power of termination. A fee simple subject to an executory limitation shifts to a third party holding an executory interest when the valid stated event operates. Classification does not by itself prove that a clause is enforceable or that its trigger occurred.
Reviewed October 26, 2026. This is an ownership and deed-interpretation concept within PSI’s national Property Ownership and related private-control topics, not a separately weighted defeasible-fee section. The whole Property Ownership domain has ten scored national broker questions. The original teaching grants below expressly supply their relevant conditions; actual instruments, succession, priority, limitations and public policy require their own review.
Read the estate’s ending before counting years
- Identify the present estate. A fee can last indefinitely yet be defeasible if a valid limitation can end it. A life estate has a measuring life; a leasehold is a different possessory estate. A mortgage, easement, tax obligation or land-use rule does not by itself make a fee defeasible. Fee simple absolute describes the estate’s duration, not freedom from every public or private burden.
- Read the whole instrument for termination mechanics. Duration words such as so long as, while or until can signal a determinable estate; condition and re-entry language can signal a condition subsequent. They are clues, not an automatic word-matching rule. A statement of intended use is not invariably a forfeiture clause. Illinois’s fee-simple inheritance presumption is qualified by express limitation, construction and operation of law.
- Pair the ending with the future holder. Automatic return to the grantor’s line points to a determinable fee and possibility of reverter. A retained election to terminate points to a condition subsequent and right of entry. An automatic divestment in favor of a third party points to an executory limitation and executory interest, subject to validity requirements. Do not call a future interest a remainder merely because it is future.
- Test the exact event. Identify what must actually happen, when, and whether an interruption, change or prohibited activity satisfies the clause. Opening a shop is not proof that a deed’s specified first sale has occurred. A temporary closure is not necessarily a permanent cessation. Even an automatic limitation can leave factual, title and possession disputes to resolve; it is not an instruction to force entry or alter records without process.
- Distinguish a title condition from a covenant. A covenant can regulate use and support an applicable injunction or damages remedy without ending the estate. Check the instrument and law rather than inventing a title forfeiture for every promise. Conversely, calling a valid title condition a covenant does not erase its operative limitation.
- Apply Illinois’s two different time questions. Section 4 of the Rights of Entry or Re-entry Act limits the specified possibilities of reverter and rights of entry where the condition has not been broken to no longer than 40 years from creation. Separately, 735 ILCS 5/13-102 addresses recovery action or entry after a condition subsequent is first broken, and 13-103 addresses action or entry after termination on a limitation or conditional limitation. Their seven-year rules have different starting events; neither creates a universal 47-year period.
- Check who holds the future interest and what can happen to it. Illinois section 1 restricts alienation and devise of the specified grantor interests, which is different from saying they cannot be inherited. Section 2 addresses passage to trust-asset recipients at trust termination; section 3 addresses cessation of specified corporation-held interests on dissolution or cessation of existence. Section 6 preserves specified releases and other rights. Do not treat those distinct provisions as one universal assignment or succession rule.
- Separate classification from a clean title conclusion. A resale or mortgage does not by itself release another valid future interest; applicable priority and protection questions still need their facts. Check the instrument, chain of title, dates, condition history, authority of any releasing person and operative law. Discriminatory restrictions and other invalid conditions cannot be made valid just by choosing a familiar estate name or recording them.
| Present estate or rule | What the supplied valid instrument does | Matching interest or distinction |
|---|---|---|
| Fee simple determinable | Ends automatically under the stated limitation; returns to grantor line | Possibility of reverter |
| Fee simple subject to condition subsequent | Gives a retained right to elect and lawfully terminate after breach | Right of entry or power of termination |
| Fee simple subject to executory limitation | Automatically divests the present fee in favor of a third party | Executory interest; separate validity rules still apply |
| Ordinary remainder after a life estate | Waits for the preceding estate’s natural end | Remainder, rather than a condition cutting short a fee |
| Restrictive covenant only | Regulates use through the applicable promise remedy | No automatic fee termination merely from the restriction |
| Illinois section 4 | Specified grantor interests while condition remains unbroken | Maximum 40 years from creation, within the Act’s scope |
| Illinois 13-102 / 13-103 | Recovery action or entry after the applicable breach or termination | Seven years from the specified event, with scope and other law checked |
| Illinois section 1 / section 6 | Restricts specified transfers but preserves specified releases and rights | Do not equate sale, devise, inheritance and release |
The distinctions that matter
| Distinction | How it works | What to notice |
|---|---|---|
| Fee simple absolute and defeasible fee | Both are fee estates. A valid special limitation can defeat the latter. | An ordinary easement or mortgage is not itself that limitation. |
| Determinable and condition subsequent | Automatic termination differs from a retained right that must be lawfully exercised. | Did the event itself end the estate, or activate an election? |
| Possibility of reverter and right of entry | The first accompanies a determinable fee; the second a condition subsequent. | Match the mechanism, not whichever phrase sounds more familiar. |
| Grantor interest and third-party interest | A possibility of reverter or right of entry is retained in the grantor’s line; an executory interest is created in a transferee. | Where does the valid instrument send the estate? |
| Executory interest and ordinary remainder | A shifting executory interest cuts short a fee on its condition. A remainder can wait for the natural end of a life estate. | Future does not automatically mean remainder. |
| Breach and successful enforcement | Breach can activate a retained right; it does not automatically finish condition-subsequent termination. | Lawful procedure and limitations remain relevant. |
| Transfer and release | A sale of a present qualified estate differs from extinguishing its valid future interest. | A buyer’s price payment is not the future holder’s release. |
| Unbroken-condition period and post-event action period | Illinois’s specified creation-based 40-year limit differs from the breach/termination-based seven-year provisions. | Which event starts the rule being tested? |
| Devise and inheritance | A will disposition is not the same as descent to an heir. | Nondevisable does not by itself mean noninheritable. |
| Classification and enforceability | Naming a form does not validate its condition, prove its trigger, identify every successor or settle title. | Keep each conclusion within the facts provided. |
Work through the facts
Automatic return under an expressly valid library grant
Assume a valid enforceable grant of a fee to a town for as long as the land is used as a public library, expressly ending automatically and returning to the grantor’s line on permanent cessation. No release, expiration or other defense applies, and permanent cessation is established.
- The instrument supplies automatic termination rather than an optional enforcement right.
- The future interest is retained by the grantor rather than given to a new third party.
Answer: The town held a fee simple determinable and the grantor retained a possibility of reverter. The supplied event operates the limitation; this is not a determination of actual possession or a disputed title record.
A retained election in the museum grant
Assume a valid enforceable fee grant to a museum that reserves the grantor’s right to terminate and re-enter for a specified prohibited commercial use. The breach is established, but the holder has not exercised the right. No other terminating event is supplied.
- The deed gives an election after breach.
- It does not state that the fee ends automatically on that breach.
Answer: The museum’s fee is subject to a condition subsequent, paired with a right of entry. The breach alone has not completed the retained termination.
A valid gift over to another person
Assume all validity and duration requirements are satisfied for a grant to A providing that title automatically passes to B upon the first sale of alcohol on the property. That sale is established and no other exception or defense is supplied.
- The event divests A’s fee.
- B is the specified third party, rather than the original grantor’s retained interest.
Answer: A held a fee simple subject to an executory limitation and B held the executory interest. This classification assumes, rather than proves, the grant’s validity.
A residence-use promise without a title-ending mechanism
For this exercise, the valid declaration creates only a residence-use covenant enforceable by an injunction, and expressly creates no automatic termination, forfeiture or retained re-entry right.
- The supplied legal effect is a use promise.
- An estate-ending future interest is expressly absent.
Answer: Classify the stated provision as a restrictive covenant, not a defeasible fee. Whether any actual instrument has only that effect requires its full terms and law.
A temporary closure is not the specified permanent cessation
Use the valid library grant from example one, but its only event is permanent cessation of library use. The library closes temporarily for repairs while the continuing library use and planned reopening are established; the exercise expressly rules out permanent cessation.
- Apply the exact trigger in this grant.
- The stipulated temporary interruption does not meet that trigger.
Answer: The supplied temporary closure does not operate this limitation. Do not turn this hypothetical into a ruling that storage, a long closure or any particular real use always satisfies a deed.
A resale does not supply the missing release
Assume the owner conveys an existing valid defeasible fee while its future interest remains valid and unresolved. No release, expiry, merger, priority rule, protected-purchaser exception or other extinguishing event applies.
- The present owner conveys the estate held on these facts.
- The resale itself does not extinguish the stipulated surviving interest.
Answer: The buyer receives the qualified estate. This does not decide every notice, recording, foreclosure or purchaser-protection issue in an actual chain of title.
An unbroken interest older than forty years
Assume a covered Illinois possibility of reverter created October 1, 1979, purportedly forever. Its condition has never been broken. Apply section 4 as of October 26, 2026, with no applicable exception or other complicating fact.
- The creation-based maximum is 40 years for this specified unbroken interest.
- More than 47 years have elapsed; the relevant forty-year anniversary was October 1, 2019.
- Forever does not override the supplied statutory limit.
Answer: The specified interest has exceeded the section 4 period. This is not a rule that every covenant, easement, executory interest or mortgage expires after forty years, nor an actual title clearance.
Recurring breaches do not supply a fresh start
Assume section 13-102 applies without an exception affecting this timing issue. A condition subsequent is first broken in 2015, with recurring breaches in 2024 and 2026. The question asks only which event starts that section’s seven-year recovery-action or entry period, not for a last filing date.
- The section identifies the first breach.
- Continuing, successive or recurring breaches do not extend that period.
Answer: Use the first breach in 2015 as the stated starting event. Neither the 2024 nor 2026 recurrence supplies a new start under this provision; actual remedies and deadlines need their full applicable law.
Trust termination and corporation dissolution are different
Compare two covered Illinois grantor interests affecting land in Illinois. In case one, a trustee holds the specified possibility of reverter and the trust terminates with its assets distributed. In case two, the specified interest was reserved by or to a corporation that dissolves or ceases to exist. Apply sections 2 and 3 as stated, with no other legal issue changing the result.
- Section 2 ends the trustee’s holding but passes the covered interest to the persons who receive the trust assets.
- Section 3 states that the specified corporation-held interest ceases and determines upon the corporation’s dissolution or cessation of existence.
- Neither rule should be turned into a blanket statement about every LLC, merger, successor or kind of future interest.
Answer: The supplied trust interest passes as section 2 specifies; the supplied corporation interest ceases under section 3. Identify the actual holder and event before applying either provision.
A racial restriction is not made valid by a reverter label
An Illinois instrument purports to forbid occupancy because of race and reserves a possibility of reverter to enforce that racial limit. The task is the restriction’s validity under section 3-105, not a decision about every other lawful provision of the instrument.
- Section 3-105 addresses void racial restrictions, including the identified reverter or entry mechanism.
- Inserting, honoring or attempting to honor a provision void under that section is a civil-rights violation.
Answer: The specified racial restriction is void; naming a defeasible form or recording the instrument does not validate it. This is not a conclusion that every use condition or every other provision is void.
Mistakes to avoid
- Every use restriction creates a defeasible fee. Read whether the estate itself can end; a covenant can regulate use without forfeiture.
- The word revert always means an automatic return. The complete instrument and governing law determine its effect.
- All defeasible estates require an election. A determinable limitation and a valid executory limitation operate automatically on their stated events.
- All automatic shifts create a possibility of reverter. A shift to a third party calls for the executory-interest analysis.
- A future holder always has a remainder. An ordinary remainder waits for the prior estate’s natural end; a shifting executory interest divests a fee.
- A mortgage or easement proves ownership is defeasible. Those can burden fee simple absolute without being an estate-ending condition.
- A sale automatically clears the future interest. Identify a valid release, expiration or other applicable extinguishing event; do not infer it from resale alone.
- Forty years applies to every property restriction. The Illinois provision addresses its specified grantor interests where the condition has not been broken.
- The statutes promise every interest forty plus seven years. Creation, first breach and termination are different starting events under different provisions.
- Each repeated breach restarts seven years. Section 13-102 expressly rejects extension for continuing, successive or recurring breaches.
- Nondevisable means no heir can ever receive the interest. Separate will disposition, inheritance and the Act’s specific succession provisions.
- Calling a clause a fee condition makes it lawful. Classification does not validate an unlawful discriminatory or otherwise invalid provision.
Check your understanding
These are original teaching questions, not recalled or predicted PSI questions. Answer first, then explain why the other choices fail.
1. What is a defeasible fee?
- Every property with unpaid taxes
- Only a month-to-month lease
- A fee estate that can end under a valid condition or limitation
- A guaranteed fee-simple absolute estate
Show answer and explanation
Answer: C. A fee estate that can end under a valid condition or limitation
The valid special limitation concerns the fee’s potential ending. A leasehold, ordinary lien or tax obligation is a separate concept.
2. A valid grant expressly ends automatically when a stated use permanently ceases and returns to the grantor’s line. What present estate matches?
- Ordinary tenancy in common alone
- Fee simple absolute without limitation
- Fee simple determinable
- Life estate
Show answer and explanation
Answer: C. Fee simple determinable
Automatic termination and the retained grantor interest pair a determinable fee with a possibility of reverter. The exercise assumes validity and that the stated trigger actually occurs.
3. Which future interest pairs with a fee simple determinable?
- Right of entry for a condition subsequent
- Leasehold
- Ordinary remainder
- Possibility of reverter
Show answer and explanation
Answer: D. Possibility of reverter
The grantor retains a possibility of reverter for the determinable fee. Do not swap it with the retained election associated with a condition subsequent.
4. A valid condition-subsequent grant reserves an election to terminate after breach. No exercise or other termination is supplied. Does breach alone automatically complete termination?
- Yes, if the owner opens any shop
- Yes, always
- No
- Yes, even if the clause says otherwise
Show answer and explanation
Answer: C. No
The retained right must be lawfully exercised under the applicable rules. That is different from an automatic limitation.
5. Which interest accompanies the condition-subsequent estate?
- Right of entry or power of termination
- Ordinary vested remainder after a life estate
- Possibility of reverter
- A broker’s commission lien in every case
Show answer and explanation
Answer: A. Right of entry or power of termination
The grantor retains an election to terminate after the specified breach. A right of entry is not permission for unlawful forcible self-help.
6. A valid grant automatically divests A’s fee in favor of third party B on the specified event. What future interest does B hold?
- An executory interest
- Only a tenancy at sufferance
- A possibility of reverter retained by the grantor
- An ordinary life-estate remainder in every case
Show answer and explanation
Answer: A. An executory interest
A shifting executory interest cuts short the fee under the assumed valid limitation. Its validity and duration requirements remain separate from the name.
7. For this exercise, an instrument expressly creates only a use covenant and injunction remedy, with no estate-ending limitation or re-entry right. What fits?
- Automatic fee-simple determinable
- Automatic executory interest in a neighbor
- A transferred fee to the government
- Restrictive covenant
Show answer and explanation
Answer: D. Restrictive covenant
The stipulated legal effect regulates use without defeating the fee. Actual deed construction needs the whole document and law.
8. Does a duration phrase alone conclusively settle every deed’s estate?
- Yes, intended purpose always creates forfeiture
- Yes, so long as always defeats all other language
- No; read the full instrument and its legal effect
- Yes, revert can have only one meaning
Show answer and explanation
Answer: C. No; read the full instrument and its legal effect
Words are clues, not substitutes for construction. A use-purpose statement is not invariably an enforceable title-ending clause.
9. Can fee simple absolute be subject to an easement or mortgage without thereby becoming a defeasible fee?
- Yes
- No, every easement is a retained right of entry
- No, all mortgages are executory limitations
- No, every burden makes it determinable
Show answer and explanation
Answer: A. Yes
The estate’s duration differs from ordinary burdens on its use, title or value. Absolute does not mean free of all law and encumbrances.
10. A valid deed’s only trigger is permanent cessation. The exercise establishes a temporary repair closure and expressly rules out permanent cessation. What follows?
- The deed automatically becomes a lease
- The stated trigger has not occurred on these facts
- All title shifts to the repair contractor
- The estate always ends because the door was closed
Show answer and explanation
Answer: B. The stated trigger has not occurred on these facts
Apply the actual event stipulated in the grant. This is not an actual judgment about whether storage or a lengthy interruption satisfies some other deed.
11. A qualified estate is resold with a stipulated surviving valid future interest and no release, expiry, priority exception or other extinguishing event. What is transferred?
- Nothing, because a defeasible owner can never convey
- The same qualified estate
- Only a license
- Fee simple absolute automatically
Show answer and explanation
Answer: B. The same qualified estate
The resale itself does not eliminate the supplied continuing interest. Real purchaser protection, notice and foreclosure questions need their own facts.
12. Under 765 ILCS 330/4, what is the maximum duration of its specified unbroken grantor future interest, if created to endure longer and no exception applies?
- Twenty years for every covenant
- Forever by using that word
- Forty years from creation
- Seven years from every repeated breach
Show answer and explanation
Answer: C. Forty years from creation
The provision’s unbroken-condition and interest-type scope matter. This is not a universal duration for easements, executory interests, leases or mortgages.
13. What starts section 13-102’s seven-year period for recovery action or entry by reason of a condition-subsequent breach?
- The latest resale regardless of breach
- The first breach
- The property’s latest appraisal
- Each successive breach
Show answer and explanation
Answer: B. The first breach
The statute expressly rejects an extension from continuing, successive or recurring breaches. Do not substitute a new start merely because the conduct repeats.
14. What event is named in section 13-103 for action or entry by reason of termination on a limitation or conditional limitation?
- The later broker listing
- Creation in every case
- Termination of the estate
- Every lender refinance
Show answer and explanation
Answer: C. Termination of the estate
This provision uses seven years after the specified termination. It is distinct from section 4’s creation-based unbroken-interest rule and section 13-102’s first-breach wording.
15. Does nondevisable by itself mean that no heir can inherit a specified Illinois grantor future interest?
- No; distinguish will disposition from inheritance and the applicable succession rules
- Yes, devise and descent are identical
- Yes, all succession is forbidden
- Yes, every trust termination extinguishes it without passage
Show answer and explanation
Answer: A. No; distinguish will disposition from inheritance and the applicable succession rules
Illinois section 1 restricts alienation and devise. Published Mahrenholz distinguishes inheritance, and sections 2 and 3 have different trust and corporation rules.
16. What does Illinois section 6 do about a conveyance made to release or extinguish a specified possibility of reverter or right of entry?
- It validates every unrelated sale of the interest
- It forbids every release
- It provides that the Act does not invalidate or affect that specified release or extinguishment
- It guarantees the present owner alone can extinguish every claim
Show answer and explanation
Answer: C. It provides that the Act does not invalidate or affect that specified release or extinguishment
A release under the relevant provision differs from an attempted ordinary alienation of the future interest. Identify the proper holder, authority, instrument and other title requirements.
17. Under the supplied covered facts of Illinois section 2, what happens to a trustee-held possibility of reverter at trust termination?
- It becomes the broker’s property
- It automatically becomes a new forty-year lease
- It always disappears without passage to anyone
- It ceases as to the trustee and passes to the recipients of the trust assets
Show answer and explanation
Answer: D. It ceases as to the trustee and passes to the recipients of the trust assets
Section 2 distinguishes the trustee’s holding from passage to those receiving trust assets. Do not substitute section 3’s corporation-dissolution result or infer that every successor arrangement is identical.
18. Under the supplied covered facts of Illinois section 3, what happens to the specified corporation-held interest when the corporation dissolves or ceases to exist?
- It ceases and determines
- Every LLC and merger necessarily has the same result
- It automatically passes under the trust-asset rule
- It automatically restarts forty years
Show answer and explanation
Answer: A. It ceases and determines
Apply the actual corporation provision and specified reserved interest. The question supplies its scope; it does not decide every other entity or succession transaction.
19. An Illinois instrument reserves a reverter to enforce a race-based occupancy prohibition. Does calling it a fee condition validate the restriction under 775 ILCS 5/3-105?
- Yes, if a broker agrees to enforce it
- Yes, because every recorded condition is valid
- Yes, because the word reverter overrides civil-rights law
- No; the specified racial restriction is void
Show answer and explanation
Answer: D. No; the specified racial restriction is void
The section expressly includes the relevant reverter and entry restrictions. Inserting or honoring a void provision is a civil-rights violation; this does not decide the validity of every other lawful clause.
20. Which statement correctly compares the Illinois time rules discussed here?
- Each recurring breach restarts seven years
- Every mortgage remedy expires forty years after its creation
- The specified unbroken-interest creation limit and post-breach or post-termination provisions have distinct scope and starting events
- Every property restriction lasts exactly forty-seven years
Show answer and explanation
Answer: C. The specified unbroken-interest creation limit and post-breach or post-termination provisions have distinct scope and starting events
Section 4, 13-102 and 13-103 answer different questions. Section 13-104 preserves mortgage and lease enforcement timing, and the Rights of Entry Act has specific exceptions and historical transition text. No universal forty-plus-seven formula follows.
Common questions
What does defeasible fee mean?
It is a fee estate that can end under a valid special condition or limitation. The three common teaching forms are determinable, subject to a condition subsequent, and subject to an executory limitation. Ask what ends the estate, whether that ending is automatic or requires a lawful election, and who holds the future interest.
What is a fee simple determinable?
The fee ends automatically when its valid stated limitation operates, and the grantor retains a possibility of reverter. Duration words can be clues, but the whole instrument controls. Classifying the limitation does not establish that an actual school, park or library use has ended, or resolve disputed possession or title records.
What is a fee simple subject to a condition subsequent?
Breach activates the retained right of entry, also called a power of termination. The fee does not end merely from the breach alone; the holder must lawfully exercise the right. The instrument, applicable limitations, release, waiver and other relevant law still matter. The name is not permission for forcible self-help.
What is a fee simple subject to an executory limitation?
A valid stated event cuts short the present fee in favor of a third party holding an executory interest. That differs from a grantor’s retained possibility of reverter or right of entry. Separate validity and duration rules must be checked; naming the form does not make every third-party gift over enforceable forever.
Which words tell me the estate type?
So long as, while, during or until can suggest duration; on condition that, a reserved election or a re-entry provision can suggest a condition subsequent. A named third-party gift over can signal an executory limitation. No single phrase replaces the full instrument’s operative meaning. Illinois’s statutory fee-simple inheritance presumption also recognises lesser estates by express language, construction or operation of law.
Does every deed restriction create a defeasible fee?
No. A use covenant can have an applicable injunction, damages or other promise remedy without terminating ownership. A mere statement of purpose is not invariably a forfeiture clause. Conversely, a valid estate-ending limitation cannot be erased by calling it a covenant. Identify the document’s actual legal effect before deciding the remedy.
Is a defeasible fee the same as a life estate, lease or easement?
No. A fee is potentially perpetual, although its valid condition can end it. A life estate is measured by a life; a leasehold has its own possessory character. An easement is a defined use right in another’s land and does not by itself turn the servient fee into a defeasible fee. Likewise, a mortgage burden alone is not an estate-ending private limitation.
How is an executory interest different from a remainder?
In the comparison used here, the executory interest divests a fee when its condition operates. An ordinary remainder after a life estate waits for the measuring life estate’s natural end. For example, an assumed valid grant to A for life, then to B, supplies that ordinary remainder structure; it is not an automatic conditional divestment of A’s fee.
Can a defeasible owner sell or mortgage the property?
The present estate can generally be conveyed or encumbered, subject to applicable law and its own terms. That act alone does not release an otherwise valid future interest. The instrument, record, notice, priority and any purchaser or lender protections need examination before an actual clean-title conclusion. Do not equate a sale of the present fee with a permitted sale of the future interest.
What does Illinois’s forty-year rule cover?
Section 4 of 765 ILCS 330 addresses the specified possibilities of reverter and rights of entry or re-entry where the condition has not been broken. It limits validity to no longer than 40 years from creation; a longer stated duration is limited accordingly. It does not promise that every interest lasts forty years, or make every easement, covenant, executory interest, mortgage or lease expire then. The Act’s exceptions and older transitional provisions must be respected.
Is there a seven-year rule after breach or termination?
Yes, within the respective provisions’ scope. Section 13-102 of the Code of Civil Procedure addresses recovery action or entry by reason of a condition-subsequent breach within seven years after the first breach. It expressly says continuing, successive or recurring breaches do not extend the period, and addresses possession from that first breach. Section 13-103 instead uses seven years after termination on a limitation or conditional limitation. Section 13-104 preserves the time rules for rights under or by virtue of mortgages or leases. These are not a universal forty-plus-seven-year formula or a personal litigation calendar.
Can the future interest be sold, left in a will or inherited?
Separate those events. Illinois section 1 makes its specified possibilities of reverter and rights of entry nonalienable and nondevisable, and rejects the identified attempted-conveyance cures. Published Mahrenholz distinguishes inheritance from devise. Trust termination, corporation dissolution and releases also have their own sections. Do not turn the transfer restriction into either a universal right to sell every future interest or a statement that no heir can ever receive one.
Can a release remove the future-interest claim?
Section 6 provides that the Act does not invalidate or affect the specified conveyance made to release or extinguish a possibility of reverter or right of entry. It also preserves specified lease, rent, mortgage, mortgage-type trust-deed and vendor-lien rights. Check the actual holder and authority, instrument, recording and other title requirements. A present owner’s unilateral resale is not the missing release, and recording a defective document does not itself supply authority.
Where is this tested on the Illinois real estate exam?
Study it within national Property Ownership and related private deed-condition topics, rather than as a separately numbered defeasible-fee quota. The whole national broker Property Ownership domain has ten scored questions. The practice on this page is original and uses expressly stated assumptions; it is not PSI material or a validated readiness score.
What happens when the holder’s trust ends or a corporation dissolves?
Under section 2, the covered trustee-held interest ceases as to the trustee at trust termination but passes to the persons receiving the trust assets. Section 3 instead provides that the specified interest reserved by or to a corporation affecting Illinois land ceases and determines when the corporation dissolves or ceases to exist. Check the holder, event and scope. These provisions are not a universal result for every LLC, corporate merger or disputed successor.
What did Mahrenholz decide about the school-property deed?
The published 1981 opinion construed the grant as a fee simple determinable with a possibility of reverter, distinguished automatic limitation from a retained election, and addressed the difference between transfer restrictions and inheritance. It reversed dismissal and remanded. It expressly left other issues unresolved, including whether the relevant school use had ceased, the sufficiency of the later conveyance and the disclaimer’s effect. It is not a final judgment that storage always breaches a school-use condition or that these plaintiffs had conclusively established title.
Does recording a discriminatory condition make it enforceable?
No. Illinois section 3-105 makes the specified race, color, religion and national-origin restrictions void, including the relevant entry or reverter mechanism, and addresses inserting or honoring a void provision. Its qualified religious-use provision must be read on its own terms; it does not create a racial-restriction exception. This section’s wording is not a complete list of all protected classes under housing law, and one void restriction does not itself decide every other provision in an instrument.
Does automatic termination mean I can take possession or clear title myself?
No. The estate classification is separate from proof of the event, the surviving interest, possession procedure and title records. A valid automatic limitation is not permission for forcible entry or unilateral removal of a recorded claim. Section 13-102’s first-breach rule and 13-103’s termination rule must be applied with their scope and other relevant law. The Rights of Entry Act’s old transitional one-year provisions do not create a fresh one-year window for every modern deed. Obtain the applicable legal and title determination for an actual dispute.
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Official sources and scope
Reviewed October 26, 2026 against the identified current Illinois statutory text and published primary readings. Source dates and reading limits are recorded separately from this editorial review. Classification examples assume the supplied grant is valid; an actual breach, deadline, successor, release, priority or title dispute needs its own facts and applicable law.
- PSI: Property Ownership and private deed-condition topics
- 765 ILCS 5/13: qualified fee-simple inheritance presumption
- 765 ILCS 330: transfer, succession, duration and release provisions
- 735 ILCS 5/13-102: first breach and recurring breaches
- 735 ILCS 5/13-103: termination on a limitation
- 735 ILCS 5/13-104: mortgage and lease timing preserved
- Mahrenholz: published estate construction and remand
- Published federal opinion: foundational estate classification only
- 775 ILCS 5/3-105: void discriminatory restrictions
- Standlee: identified private-covenant construction and enforcement analysis
This is exam preparation, not advice for a specific transaction. State law and the applicable facts control. Our editorial and corrections process explains how to report an issue.