Real Property: Future Interests: Vested vs. contingent remainders

• Difference between vested remainders and contingent remainders:

• Remainder – a future interest created in a grantee that is capable of becoming possessory upon the expiration of a prior possessory estate created in the same conveyance in which the remainder is created. (Sociable, patient and polite)

• Remainderman is sociable
• Always accompanies a preceding estate of known fixed duration such as a life estate or a term of years. {To A for life, then to B”}

• Remainderman is patient and polite
• Never follows a defeasible fee – it waits patiently for preceding estate to run its natural course
• If present estate is defeasible fee, the future interest is not a remainder. It is an executory interest if held by someone other than O, the grantor.