Doctrine of Worthier Title - History of The Doctrine

History of The Doctrine

The doctrine of worthier title, like the Rule in Shelley's Case, had its origin in attempts by royal courts to avoid various devices contrived by lawyers during the era of feudalism to retain lands in their families while avoiding feudal duties, and to secure its free alienability. The creation of family settlements designed to preserve land within the family, transfer it without feudal duties due to the lords of the fee upon transfer at death, and preserve it from claims of creditors, occupied the ingenuity of many common lawyers during the late Middle Ages. So did efforts to undo the restrictions placed by ancestors once they became inconvenient. These concerns underlie the explanation given in Coke on Littleton:

But if a man makes a gift in tail, or a lease of life, the remainder to his right heirs, this remainder is void, and he hath the revision in him; for the ancestor during his life beareth in his body in judgment of law all his heirs, and therefore it is truly said that haeres est pars antecessoris. ("the heir is a part of the ancestor") And this appeareth in a common case, that if land be given to a man and his heirs, all his heirs are so totally in him as he may give the land to whom he will.

The law deemed that since no one is an "heir" until the person he or she inherits from dies, an attempt to create a remainder interest in the heir created no present interest at all. This interpretation draws strength by analogy from the common words of a conveyance in fee simple, "to N. and his heirs." This conveyance creates no present interest in any heir; why should a remainder do the same?