Blackacre
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Blackacre, Whiteacre, Greenacre, and variations thereof are the placeholder names of fictitious estates in land universally used by professors of law in common law jurisdictions, particularly in the area of real property, to discuss the rights of various parties to a piece of land. A typical law school or Bar exam question on real property might say:
- Adam, owner of a fee simple in Blackacre conveyed the property "to Bill for life, remainder to Charles, provided that if any person should consume alcohol on the property before the first born son of Charles turns twenty-one, then the property shall go to Dwight in fee simple." Assume that neither Bill, Charles, or Dwight is an heir of Adam, and that Adam's only heir is his son, Edward. Discuss the ownership interests in Blackacre of Adam, Bill, Charles, Dwight and Edward.
Where more than one estate is needed to demonstrate a point — perhaps relating to a dispute over boundaries or riparian rights — a second estate will usually be called Whiteacre[1], a third, Greenacre, and a fourth, Brownacre.
Jesse Dukeminier, author of one of the leading series of textbooks on property, traces the use of Blackacre and Whiteacre for this purpose to a 1628 treatise by Sir Edward Coke. Dukeminier suggests that the term might originate with references to colors associated with certain crops ("peas and beans are black, corn and potatoes are white, hay is green"), or with the means by which rents were to be paid, with black rents payable in produce and white rents in silver. [2]
Blackacre is also the name adopted by a literary journal at The University of Texas School of Law. The journal is compiled and edited each year by the Texas Law Writers League, an organization co-founded by Meera George, Robert Love, and Michael Matthews in 2004.
Blackacre is also the name of a journal at the University of Sydney Law School, published annually by the Sydney University Law Society.
The Blackacre State Nature Preserve in Kentucky was so named by the donor of the land, Macauley Smith, who had been a judge on the Kentucky Court of Appeals.[3]
[edit] References
- ^ Black’s Law Dictionary, “blackacre”
- ^ Jesse Dukeminier and James E. Krier. Property, 5th Ed. Aspen Law and Business, 2002, p. 160n.
- ^ Blackacre Foundation website
