Definition
An estate upon condition implied is a freehold estate that carries a condition built into its very nature and legal structure, even though no condition is stated in the instrument creating it. The condition arises not from express language but from the character of the estate itself — it is inseparable from the estate's legal essence and constitution.
The classic example is the estate granted to a corporation: the law implies a condition that the estate will determine if the corporation is dissolved, because perpetual existence cannot be assumed. Similarly, an estate granted to a husband and wife was understood at common law to carry implied conditions arising from the nature of the marital relationship. In each case, the law reads a condition into the grant without the grantor needing to articulate one.
This stands in contrast to an estate upon condition expressed, where the condition triggering forfeiture or termination is written explicitly into the deed or grant.
Common Confusion
ESTATE UPON CONDITION IMPLIED vs. ESTATE UPON CONDITION EXPRESSED: The distinction is not merely formal. An express condition must be clearly stated and strictly construed against forfeiture; courts traditionally disfavor forfeiture and narrow express conditions accordingly. An implied condition, by contrast, flows from legal doctrine rather than the grantor's language, so its existence and operation are determined by law rather than by interpretation of the instrument. Researchers encountering historical deeds or grants should not assume that silence as to conditions means the estate was unconditional — implied conditions may attach by operation of law regardless of what the instrument says or omits.
ESTATE UPON CONDITION IMPLIED vs. DETERMINABLE ESTATE: These are related but distinct. A determinable estate (or fee simple determinable) ends automatically upon a specified event; the limitation is built into the words of the grant itself ("so long as," "until," "during"). An estate upon condition implied does not end automatically — at common law, termination typically required entry or some act by the grantor or grantor's heirs. The practical consequence (loss of the estate) may be similar, but the legal mechanism and the required steps to enforce differ.
Why It Matters in Research
The term appears in its fullest form primarily in English common law sources and early American property treatises. By the mid-nineteenth century, American courts and commentators were already collapsing distinctions among conditional estates, and the term "estate upon condition implied" became less common in American case law than in English equity and real property doctrine.
When researching historical sources — particularly deeds, conveyances, and property disputes from the colonial and early national periods — researchers must recognize that implied conditions were a live category. A grantor's failure to spell out a condition did not necessarily mean the estate was absolute. Blackstone's discussion at 2 Bl. Com. 152 and Kent's Commentaries at 4 Kent's Com. 121 (both cited by Burrill) are the foundational texts; any serious historical research on this term should begin there.
The term is also a navigational signal: when Burrill and his contemporaries indexed under "estate upon condition implied," they were directing readers toward a cluster of doctrine that included conditions in law (an older synonym), determinable fees, and the rules governing re-entry and forfeiture. Researchers should follow those cross-references, because the line between an implied condition and a fee simple determinable was contested in nineteenth-century American courts and may not be drawn consistently across sources.
Modern property law has substantially reorganized this material. The Restatement (Third) of Property treats fee simples subject to executory limitation, fee simples determinable, and fee simples subject to condition subsequent as the primary categories. The old category of "estate upon condition implied" does not map cleanly onto any single modern category — it distributed itself across several, depending on the implied condition at issue.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's entry is compressed but precise. It captures the two essential points: (1) the condition is annexed inseparably from the estate's essence and constitution, and (2) no words of condition are required. Burrill signals the intellectual lineage clearly by citing Blackstone and Kent, the two authorities from whom virtually all nineteenth-century American property doctrine on this point descended.
What Burrill's entry does not provide — and what later dictionaries would add — is the procedural dimension: how an implied condition was enforced, what acts were required to effect forfeiture, and how courts distinguished implied conditions from limitations. For those questions, the researcher must go to the treatises cited rather than relying on the dictionary entry alone.
Jurisdictional Note
The category was fully developed in English common law and carried into American jurisdictions through reception of the common law. American states diverged in how rigorously they maintained the distinction between implied conditions and express conditions, and some statutory reforms of property law in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries eliminated or merged these categories. The term has little operative significance in modern American property practice but remains essential for interpreting historical instruments and understanding period case law.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Estates in Land; Conditions and Limitations in Conveyancing; Fee Simple Estates