Definition
An executed remainder is a remainder in which a present interest vests in the remainderman immediately upon creation, even though the actual possession and enjoyment of the property is postponed until a future time — typically until the termination of the preceding possessory estate. The interest is "executed" in the sense that the transfer has already occurred and is complete; nothing further need happen for the remainderman to hold the interest. What remains is only the wait for possession, not the completion of any condition.
Executed remainder contrasts with executory remainder, which historically referred to a future interest whose vesting was contingent upon some future event or condition. The executed remainder is, in modern property law terminology, equivalent to what is called a vested remainder — an interest already fixed in a known, ascertained person, subject to no condition precedent beyond the natural termination of the prior estate.
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Common Confusion
EXECUTED REMAINDER vs. EXECUTORY REMAINDER vs. CONTINGENT REMAINDER
These three terms have overlapping histories and are a persistent source of confusion in historical sources. "Executed remainder" and "executory remainder" look nearly identical but mean opposite things in classical usage. An executed remainder has already vested; an executory remainder has not. Meanwhile, "contingent remainder" — the term that survived into modern usage — covers much of the ground that "executory remainder" once occupied, though the two were not perfectly synonymous under the older common law. Researchers working in historical sources must be alert to which term an author is using and in what era, since the vocabulary shifted significantly between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. Modern American property law largely retired both "executed remainder" and "executory remainder" as standalone terms, preferring the vested/contingent distinction instead.
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Why It Matters in Research
The term "executed remainder" is primarily a historical term of art. Researchers will encounter it in English common law treatises, early American property law texts, and nineteenth-century judicial opinions, but it has largely disappeared from modern American legal usage. Understanding it is essential for reading older sources accurately, but applying it to modern doctrine requires translation.
The key navigational point: when a historical source says "executed remainder," read it as the functional equivalent of "vested remainder" in modern property law. Burrill's cross-reference to "vested remainder" makes this explicit, and it is the most useful gloss a researcher can carry into any historical source.
The pairing of this term with Fearne's Contingent Remainders (Fearne, Cont. Rem.) is significant. Charles Fearne's treatise was the dominant authority on remainder doctrine for over a century on both sides of the Atlantic, and his distinction between executed and executory remainders organized much of the case law and commentary through the nineteenth century. When historical dictionaries cite Fearne and Blackstone's Commentaries together — as all three sources here do — it signals that the term belongs to the classical English property law tradition that American courts inherited and then gradually reorganized under different vocabulary.
Researchers should also watch for jurisdictional drift in historical sources. American treatise writers in the nineteenth century sometimes used "executed remainder" and "vested remainder" interchangeably, sometimes distinguished them, and occasionally used "executory remainder" to mean what Fearne meant by "contingent remainder." There is no consistent usage across all American courts. If the precise legal status of an interest is at issue in a historical case, trace the specific court's vocabulary rather than assuming terminological uniformity.
The Statute of Uses (1536) lurks in the background of this term. "Executed" in the property law context carries the technical sense of a use or interest that has been executed — transferred by operation of law into legal title — under the Statute. This dimension of the word occasionally surfaces in older English decisions and may appear in American equity cases dealing with trust-like instruments. Researchers working near the Statute of Uses in historical materials should be aware that "executed" carries this additional valence.
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Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries converge on the same essential definition: an executed remainder passes a present interest to the remainderman, with only the enjoyment postponed. Black's, Bouvier's, and Burrill's each cite the same two authorities — Blackstone's Commentaries, Book II, page 168, and Fearne's Contingent Remainders, page 31 — which reflects how thoroughly those two works dominated the doctrinal landscape of remainder law in the Anglo-American tradition.
The three entries are effectively identical in substance, with minor differences in phrasing. Burrill adds the most useful editorial signal by cross-referencing "Vested remainder" directly, making explicit the conceptual equivalence that the other two leave for the reader to infer.
None of the three entries addresses the Statute of Uses, the erosion of the executed/executory distinction in American courts, or the eventual terminological consolidation around "vested" and "contingent." This is a significant gap for the modern researcher: the historical dictionaries capture classical doctrine accurately but give no guidance on the term's fate in later American practice.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
property_6: Future Interests — Remainder (Vested, Contingent, Subject to Open) — The Law Mind Property Law Encyclopedia
estates_110: Classification of Future Interests — Remainders, Reversions, Executory Interests, and Powers of Termination — The Law Mind Trusts, Estates & Probate Encyclopedia
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