Estate

The MBE rarely asks “what is an estate” outright; it hands you a granting clause and makes you classify the present estate and name what follows it, then layers a second issue on top — usually a waste claim or a Rule Against Perpetuities strike. The tell is the language: “to A for life” signals a life estate (watch for waste — a life tenant who commits affirmative or permissive waste, or fails to pay taxes and mortgage interest, is liable to the remainderman, though that carrying-cost duty is capped at the property’s income or fair rental value). “So long as,” “until,” or “while” creates a fee simple determinable; “but if” or “provided that” creates a fee simple subject to condition subsequent.

A classic trap is confusing an estate (one owner’s interest over time) with a tenancy (how co-owners share a single estate) — survivorship and the four unities are tenancy doctrine. Don’t conflate a defeasible fee’s forfeiture with a covenant, which yields only damages or an injunction, never loss of title. And unlike a removable trade fixture, an estate is the land itself — it conveys, it doesn’t detach.