The Law
Under the traditional American common law doctrine, the 99-year term was not literal, but merely an arbitrary time span beyond the life expectancy of any possible lessee or lessor.
In the law of several US states, a 99-year lease will always be the longest possible contract for realty by statute, but many have enacted shorter terms and some allow infinite terms.
The 99-year lease concept has been more common under the civil law regimes when it comes to concessions of territory: most concessions last for 99 years.
Read more about this topic: 99-year Lease
Famous quotes containing the word law:
“The law is a sort of hocus-pocus science, that smiles in yer face while it picks yer pocket: and the glorious uncertainty of it is of more use to the professors than the justice of it.”
—Charles Macklin (1690–1797)