Talk:Rule against perpetuities

Maybe this needs to be started over
I wholeheartedly agree that this article is not effective in explaining or illustrating the rule against perpetuities. I have never found this topic very complicated, despite its reputation. But this article makes it seem far too complex, and it's almost entirely because of all the jargon and twisted law-school textbook syntax.

I am tempted to delete the whole thing and start from scratch....unless anyone objects.... 76.115.241.169 (talk) 01:23, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Please do delete the whole thing and start over. This is supposed to be an encyclopedia article, not a jargon-filled, poorly-written commentary.Joesonyx (talk) 17:20, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

References in Popular Culture
It might be worthwhile to add such a section to this article. The Descendants (film) incorporates and mentions this rule as the key to one of its plotlines. Jrgilb (talk) 04:44, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

--As does Body Heat

Jeepers
Wow this starts off hard. Jeez, a lot of our readers aren't lawyers, you know. In fact, a lot of readers are in junior high, or read English indifferently, or never finished high school. Could we at least give the poor saps a couple sentences before they're down the rabbit hole?

I suggest this new lede:


 * The common law rule against perpetuities forbids instruments (contracts, wills, and so forth) from tying up property too long beyond the lives of people living at the time the instrument was written. For instance, willing property to one's great-great-great grandson (to be held in trust for him, but not owned, by the intervening generations) would normally violate the rule against perpetuities.

(Then we can segue to the existing lede: "Stated more formally, the rule against perpetuities forbids some future interests... blah blah blah".

Yes there are concievable circumstances where the example wouldn't hold true (I said "normally"; if you want to, add a few more "great-"s). We are not a court of law here, we are an encyclopedia, we are here to impart information to the masses.

If anyone has a better lede or suggestions for improvements, now's the time. Absent objection I propose to insert this lede presently. Herostratus (talk) 10:40, 18 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Crickets, so I made the change. Herostratus (talk) 03:44, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

"Thus leaving John with a fee simple determinable and the grantor a possibility of reverter."
Could we have an English translation, please? --Guy Macon (talk) 06:10, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

In the news - Disney vs Ron DeSantis
This topic may get a lot of attention because of a recent news story. There's a board that essentially acts as the government for the Disney World area, and they were replaced by a new board appointed by Florida governor Ron DeSantis. Just before the new board took over, the old board transferred a lot of its power to the Disney Corporation in perpetuity, with a provision saying that if the Rule against Perpetuities applies, the agreement would continue until 21 years after the death of the last then-living descendant of Charles III. — Narsil (talk) 23:33, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

Impenetrable citations
In addition to the rather jargony nature of the article's prose (brought up in various previous discussions above and in the archived discussions), there are also a number of citations — unlinked — that were presumably written by and for legal scholars. While I'm willing to presume that these are valid and meaningful legal citations, Wikipedia is not a court of law, and citations like and  provide no help at all for lay readers wishing to confirm the verifiability of the cited claims. FeRDNYC (talk) 04:21, 9 June 2024 (UTC)