Definition
A cross remainder is a future interest arrangement arising in grants to two or more persons as tenants in common, where each grantee's share is subject to a particular estate (such as a life estate), with the remainder in each share going over to the other grantee or grantees upon the termination of that particular estate. The remainders are said to "cross" because each co-tenant holds a remainder in the other's share: if one tenant in common dies or otherwise determines their particular estate, their share passes not to a third party but to the surviving co-tenant or co-tenants by virtue of the remainder already vested in them.
In practical terms: suppose land is conveyed to A and B as tenants in common for their respective lives, with cross remainders to each other, and then over to C in fee. If A dies first, B takes A's share by virtue of the cross remainder — B now holds the whole for the rest of B's life — before the property ultimately passes to C. Without the cross remainder, A's share at A's death would fall immediately to C, splitting the beneficial enjoyment prematurely.
Cross remainders are a creature of the old common law of real property and are most at home in pre-twentieth-century conveyancing. They are rarely encountered in modern drafting but appear with some regularity in historical deeds, settlements, and family conveyances.
---
Common Confusion
Cross remainder is sometimes loosely conflated with joint tenancy survivorship. They are distinct. Survivorship in joint tenancy operates by operation of law and extinguishes the deceased tenant's share as a matter of title. A cross remainder is an express future interest: it must be created by language in the conveyance, it operates against a background of tenancy in common (not joint tenancy), and it does not destroy the underlying separate shares — it merely redirects who takes the particular estate in each share when it falls in. Researchers reading historical instruments should not assume survivorship language creates cross remainders or vice versa.
---
Why It Matters in Research
Cross remainders appear almost exclusively in the historical record — settlement deeds, marriage portions, and family conveyances from the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries. A researcher examining a chain of title or parsing a Chancery dispute over a family estate will encounter cross remainder language without always recognizing it. The structural signature is a grant to multiple persons with a particular estate each, followed by language such as "remainder to the other or others of them" before any final remainder over to a third party or in fee.
Two research traps are common. First, the term is sometimes implied rather than stated. Early common law courts debated whether cross remainders could arise by implication from the language of a conveyance, or whether they required express words. The answer varied by context and period — cross remainders by implication were more readily recognized in devises (wills) than in deeds. A historical instrument that does not use the phrase "cross remainder" may nonetheless create one, and an instrument that gestures toward the concept may fall short of creating it under the strict rules applied to deeds. Second, the failure to create cross remainders where the grantor apparently intended them was a recognized source of litigation; equity sometimes intervened where the legal effect of a conveyance did not match evident intent.
Researchers working in the corpus on future interests, conveyancing, or Chancery practice should treat cross remainders as connected tissue between the law of remainders generally, the law of tenancy in common, and the rules governing construction of deeds versus wills.
---
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary gives the most useful definition in the source corpus, describing a cross remainder as a species of remainder created out of a tenancy in common, arising when lands are given to two or more as tenants in common with a particular estate limited to each in his share, and remainder over to the other or others. This is accurate and structurally sound. Burrill's treatment is brief but captures the essential mechanics.
Rapalje & Lawrence's entry for this term refers only to a cross-reference ("See RE-"), which provides no independent analytical value. The absence of a substantive entry in Rapalje & Lawrence is itself informative: by the late nineteenth century, when that dictionary was compiled, cross remainders were already receding from active conveyancing practice and were more a subject of legal history and construction disputes than of current drafting.
Neither source addresses the doctrine of cross remainders by implication, which was a significant technical controversy in English property law and which Fearne's treatise on contingent remainders and Blackstone's Commentaries address with greater care. Researchers who need the full doctrinal picture should not rely on the historical dictionary sources alone.
---
Jurisdictional Note
Cross remainders are a concept of English common law real property and are most relevant to jurisdictions with a common law conveyancing heritage. American courts in the nineteenth century recognized cross remainders in both deeds and wills, though the strictness of construction applied differed by state. Modern statutory reforms to future interests — including the Uniform Statutory Rule Against Perpetuities and various state property law revisions — have not abolished cross remainders but have rendered them vanishingly rare in contemporary practice.
---
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Property Law Encyclopedia — Future Interests: Remainder (Vested, Contingent, Subject to Open)
---