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 related to the law:
“Two principles, according to the Settembrinian cosmogony, were in perpetual conflict for possession of the world: force and justice, tyranny and freedom, superstition and knowledge; the law of permanence and the law of change, of ceaseless fermentation issuing in progress. One might call the first the Asiatic, the second the European principle.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)