Cestui Que Vie Trust Act 1666

[Mariela Laflam]

Duringthe black plague and great fires of London, Parliament enacted Cestui Que Vie Act 1666. I want the Government to acknowledge that the people born in the UK are living natural entities (until their real death) under God and do this by revoking the outdated act.

During black plague great fires of London, Parliament enacted the Cestui Que Vie Act 1666.

This subrogated the rights of men and women, meaning all were declared dead, lost at sea.

The Gov took custody of everybody and their property into a trust. The state became the trustee holding all titles to the people and property, until a living man comes back to reclaim those titles. The government have many systems that reveal a specific humans condition and so the time for assuming death is over.

The presumption of death in the UK is governed by the Presumption of Death Act 2013. We could accept a petition calling for changes to how this legislation works, but it would need to be clear what changes you want.

The data shows the number of people who have signed the petition by country as well as in the constituency of each Member of Parliament. This data is available for all petitions on the site. It is not a list of people who have signed the petition. The only name that is shared on the site is that of the petition creator.

The cestui que is the person for whose benefit (use) the trust is created. Any such person is, unless restricted by the trust instrument, fully entitled to the equitable interests such as annual rents/produce/interest, as opposed to the legal ones such as any capital gain, of the property forming the trust assets.[1] Two subsets, B and C, can exist:

Both cestui ques are rooted in medieval law, a legal device for avoiding feudal services (most forms of servitude) due to an overlord, by granting the land for the use of another, one who owed none of these to the lord. The law of cestui que tended to defer jurisdiction to courts of equity as opposed to the less flexible common law courts. The device was often used by people who might be absent from the kingdom for an extended time (as on a Crusade, or a business venture), who held a tenancy in the land and in return owed feudal incidents (services) to the landlord. The land could be left for the use of a third party, who did not owe those incidents to the lord.

Any such "in trust" legal status was partly to circumvent the Statute of Mortmain, which sought to end the relatively common practice of leaving real property (land, milling rights, markets, fisheries) to the Church (meaning any of its branches), on the tenant's death, so as to avoid dues (inquisitions post mortem) which could, unpaid, lead to reversion/repossession of the tenancy to the landlord. Two concepts explain the origin of mortmain ("dead hand"). First, it can be characterised as referring to the deceased donor and former owner, and their desire, in their Will that the Church inherit. Second, as the Church (a nonnatural person recognized by the common law) never dies, the land never leaves its "dead hand". Before this act, vast tracts land were left directly to the Church, which never relinquished it. Other land could be transferred to anyone, inherited only through a family line (sometimes only the male line), or revert to an over-lord or the Crown upon the death of the tenant. Church land had been a source of contention between the Crown and the Church for centuries.

Creating a trust, again, allowed branches of the Church to farm the land beneficially, while the legal title (meaning right to transfer if needed and gain or lose in capital) belonged to a corporation of lawyers or other entities, with discretion to benefit the Church, so preserving the pre-Statute practice.

It is the opinion of William Holdsworth[3] quoting such scholars as Gilbert, Sanders, Blackstone, Spence and Digby, that cestui que in English law had a Roman origin. An analogy exists between cestui que uses and a usufructus (usufruct) or the bequest of a fideicommissum. These all tended to create a feoffment to one person for the use of another. Gilbert[4] writes (also seen in Blackstone)[5] "that they answer more to the fideicommissum than the usufructus of the civil law". These were transplanted into England from Roman civil law about the close of the reign of Edward III of England by means of foreign ecclesiastics who introduced them to evade the Statute of Mortmain. Others argue that the comparison between cestui que and Roman law is merely superficial. The transfer of land for the use of one person for certain purposes to be carried out either in the lifetime or after the death of the person conveying it has its basis in Germanic law. It was popularly held that land could be transferred for the use from one person to another in local custom. The formal English or Saxon law did not always recognize this custom. The practice was called Salman or Treuhand. Sala is German for "transfer".[6] It is related to the Old English sellen, "to sell".

The earliest appearance of cestui que in the medieval period was the feoffee to uses, which, like the Salman, was held on account of another. This was called the cestui que use. It was because the feoffor could impose on him many various duties that landowners acquired through his instrumentality the power to do many things with their land. This was used to avoid the rigidity of medieval common law of land and its uses. Germanic law was familiar with the idea that a man who holds property on account of, or to the use of another is bound to fulfill his trust. Frankish formulas from the Merovingian period describe property given to a church ad opus sancti illius ("for the use of its saint"). Mercian books in the ninth century convey land ad opus monachorum ("for the use of monks"). The Domesday Book refers to geld or money, sac and soc held in ad opus regis ("for the use of the king"), or in reginae ("of the queen") or vicecomitis ("of the viscount"). The laws of William I of England speak of the sheriff holding money al os le rei ("for the use of the king").[7][8]

Others state that the cestui que use trust was the product of Roman law. In England it was the invention of ecclesiastics who wanted to escape the Statute of Mortmain. The goal was to obtain a conveyance of an estate to a friendly person or corporation, with the intent that the use of the estate would reside with the original owner.[9][10][11]

Pollock and Maitland describe cestui que use as the first step toward the law of agency.[12] They note that the word "use" as it was employed in medieval English law was not from the Latin usus, but rather from the Latin word opus, meaning "work". From this came the Old French words os or oes.[13][full citation needed] Although with time the Latin document for conveying land to the use of John would be written ad opus Johannis ("for the work of John") which was interchangeable with ad usum Johannis, or the fuller formula, ad opus et ad usum, the earliest history suggests the term "use" evolved from ad opus.[14]

Many reasons have been given for the invention of the cestui que use as a legal device. During the Crusades, and other wars on the Continent, landowners might be gone for long periods of time. Others might be absent because of business adventures or religious pilgrimages. There was no assurance they would ever return home. The cestui que use allowed them to leave a trusted friend or relative with the sort of powers, discretions and they hoped, the duties. Today, this power would be called the "power of attorney". Religious orders such as Franciscans, Cistercians, Benedictines and other mendicant orders took vows of poverty, yet retained the use of donated property. Cestui que use allowed them the benefits of land without legal ownership.[15][16]

Besides the obvious limitations placed on cestui que by the Statute of Mortmain, the Statute of Uses and the Statute of Wills, its legality was shaped indirectly by provisions within Magna Carta and Quia Emptores.

Example 1: Albert is the owner of a landholding called Blackacre. He conveys this to Richard with the command that Richard hold the land with the duty not for Richard's benefit, but for a different purpose. This could be to do a job, such as collect rents and profits for the purpose of passing them to a third person, Lucy. This was nothing more than a clever legal device with Richard playing either an active or passive role.

Example 2: If Jane (women could engage in cestui que use) granted Blackacre to Charles to the use of David, then David became the beneficial owner and Jane could not vary or detract from that ownership.

Example 3: If Mary wanted to grant Blackacre away from her direct heir James to her younger son Jasper, then she might well do so by a grant of Richard to the use of Jasper in tail, remainder to James in fee simple. Only Richard had a legal estate, the interests of Jasper and James being equitable analogues of a legal fee tail and fee simple in remainder.

Example 4: If Mary wanted to make a will of the equitable ownership of Blackacre, she would be able to do so by a grant to Richard to the use of herself, Mary. The ownership of Blackacre did not pass on Mary's death to her heir but went to wherever she might will it. By this method, Mary could keep her wishes secret until her death when her will would be read, and would prevail. This was a way to defeat primogeniture inheritance.

Example 5: Uses were so common by the middle of the fifteenth century that they were presumed to be in existence even if no intention could be proved. If Martin granted Blackacre to Martha, and she could show no consideration (that is, that she paid for it), then Martha would be considered in equity to be the feoffee to unspecified uses to be announced at Martin's discretion. If Martin sold Blackacre to Martha, but did not go through the formal routines of feoffment to complete the conveyance, Martha could not become the legal owner. But in equity, Martin held the land to the cestui que use of Martha. It would have been unconscionable for him to do otherwise having taken her money for the sale of Blackacre.

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