Most law students (even legal practitioners) approach the rule against perpetuities with a sense of intense unease and even foreboding. The subject is perceived as a labyrinth of technicality, complexity and difficult concepts. Much of the difficulty, however, in seeking to understand the subject lies in the fact that the rule against perpetuities is, in a sense, misnamed. It is this which causes confusion.
In reality, there are two separate rules. First, there is the rule against remoteness of vesting, which is aimed at preventing contingent interests vesting too late or at too remote a date. Secondly, there is the rule against perpetual duration (sometimes also referred to as the rule against inalienability), which is concerned with non-charitable (ie, private) purpose trusts which last too long. Here, the aim is to prevent trust assets being tied up for ever without any benefit to human individuals.
It should be noted that the Perpetuities and Accumulations Act 2009, which introduced
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