property law Property law is the area of law that governs the various forms of ownership in real property (land) and personal property. Property refers to legally protected claims to resources, such as land and personal property, including intellectual prope ...

of countries with a

common law Common law (also known as judicial precedent, judge-made law, or case law) is the body of law primarily developed through judicial decisions rather than statutes. Although common law may incorporate certain statutes, it is largely based on prece ...

background, including the United States and some Canadian provinces, pur autre vie ( Law French for "for another slife") is a duration of a proprietary freehold interest in the form of a variant of a

life estate In common law and statutory law, a life estate (or life tenancy) is the ownership of immovable property for the duration of a person's life. In legal terms, it is an estate in real property that ends at death, when the property rights may rever ...

. While it is similar to a standard

pur sa vie (for his or her own life), it differs in that a person's life interest will last for the life of ''another person'', the cestui que vie, instead of his or her own. For example, if Bob is given use of the family house for as long as his mother lives, he has possession of the house pur autre vie. A life estate pur autre vie can be created when a contingent remainder is destroyed, in a Doctrine of Merger situation, where one person acquires the life estate of another and thereby destroys a remainder not already vested. It can also arise when a life tenant alienates his life estate to another, whereby the person to whom the estate is devised gains a life estate pur autre vie of the original life tenant.

References

{{law-stub Property law