Statute of Uses

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The Statute of Uses (enacted in 1535 and effective in 1536) is a statute passed by Henry VIII which converted all English equitable estates that were created through "use" into legal estates. Thus, a grant of property to A under common law with the equitable title going to B would result in A losing title and B possessing the full title to the land.

Section 1 – Where any person or persons stand to be seized, or at any time hereafter shall happen to be seized, of any…lands, tenements, rents, services, reversions, remainders, or other hereditaments, to the use, confidence, or trust of any other person or persons, or any body politique, by reason of any [conveyance], contract, agreement, will or otherwise...in every such case, all and every such person and persons, and bodies politique, that have, or hereafter shall have any such use, confidence or trust, in fee simple, fee tayle, for terme of life or years, or otherwise…or any use, confidence or trust, in remainder or reverter, shall from henceforth stand and be seized, deemed, and adjudged in lawfull seizin...[etc.]...of and in such like estate, as they had or shall have, in use, trust or confidence...

It has often been stated that the purpose of the rule was to eliminate loopholes in property law that allowed possessors of land to avoid paying taxes on their property by holding it in equity. However, as a matter of realistic politics the major purpose was to facilitate the dissolution of the monasteries. In order to avoid the Statutes of Mortmain, legal title to much if not most of the lands of the monasteries was held by foeffees to use (the equivalent of the modern "trustees") for the benefit of the monasteries. The statute vested legal title in the monasteries, thus facilitating the reversion of the lands to the Crown by virtue of the statutes rendering the King head of the Church in England.

Once the Statute had served its political purpose, the "use" was reinvented by legal sleight of hand in the form of the "trust." A grant in fee simple "unto and to the use of A in trust for B" resulted in a use for A, which was executed into a grant in fee to A in trust for B; the trust (in effect another name for a use) was not executed by the statute on the principle that a use upon a use was void – but was effective as a newfangled "trust." Similar reasoning enabled what are called executory interests today, which would have been void at law prior to the Statute of Uses.