Definition
Pour autre vie (also written pur autre vie) is a Law French phrase meaning "for another's life." It describes an estate or interest in property measured not by the life of the person holding the interest, but by the life of a third party — the cestui que vie.
A life estate pour autre vie arises when a grantor conveys a life estate to a grantee, but the duration of that estate is tied to the life of someone other than the grantee. For example: A holds a life estate measured by B's life. If A dies before B, the estate does not terminate — it passes as personal property (historically as a freehold occupancy) until B dies. If A outlives B, the estate ends at B's death regardless of A's continued survival.
The term is most commonly encountered in property law when a life tenant conveys their life estate to another person. Because a life tenant cannot convey more than they hold, what the transferee receives is an estate pour autre vie — an interest lasting only as long as the original measuring life (the original life tenant) survives.
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Common Language
This is pure legal jargon derived from Law French. There is no meaningful common English usage of this phrase outside the legal context. The COMMON LANGUAGE section is omitted accordingly.
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Common Confusion
POUR AUTRE VIE vs. ORDINARY LIFE ESTATE: The distinction matters. An ordinary life estate is measured by the life of the holder — it ends when the holder dies. An estate pour autre vie is measured by someone else's life — it can outlive or be cut short relative to the holder's own lifespan. Researchers encountering "life estate" in historical instruments should not assume the measuring life is the grantee's; the instrument may designate a third party entirely.
CESTUI QUE VIE: The cestui que vie is the person whose life measures the estate — not necessarily the holder of the estate. These roles are frequently conflated in older secondary sources. The cestui que vie need not have any possessory interest in the property at all.
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Core Elements
For an estate pour autre vie to exist, three elements must be present:
1. A valid conveyance of a property interest with limited duration.
2. The measuring life is a specific, identified third party (the cestui que vie), not the grantee.
3. The estate continues only as long as the measuring life survives, regardless of what happens to the current holder.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term appears frequently in historical conveyancing instruments, equity records, and real property treatises from the colonial period through the nineteenth century. Researchers working with deeds, wills, or trust instruments from that era must recognize that a "life estate" in historical documents may be pour autre vie — meaning the duration of the interest depends on identifying a third party whose life is the measuring rod, not the named grantee.
The practical consequences of missing this distinction are significant: the estate's duration, the rights of the holder to convey, and the question of what happens to the interest when the holder dies all turn on whether the measuring life belongs to the holder or to a third party. In historical records, the cestui que vie may be named parenthetically or by descriptive reference ("during the life of my son John"), and the phrase pour autre vie may not appear explicitly.
Researchers in equity and trust law should also note that this estate type appears in the administration of settled estates and trusts, where a trustee or beneficiary might hold an interest measured by the life of another family member. Life insurance and annuity instruments in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries sometimes incorporated similar measuring-life mechanics, creating cross-references between property records and financial instruments in a given corpus.
The term also arises in the context of the Cestui Que Vie Act 1666 (an English statute), which addressed what happened when a cestui que vie went missing — a practically significant problem when the entire duration of a property interest depended on confirming that a specific person was still alive.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill defines pour autre vie concisely and accurately: "For another's life. Pur terme d'autre vie; for the term of another's life," citing Littleton's Tenures section 56. This entry is faithful to the classical property law usage and correctly points researchers to Littleton as the foundational source.
The Burrill entry's brevity is appropriate given the term's technical narrowness, but it offers no guidance on the practical consequences of the estate type — what happens to the estate on the holder's death before the measuring life ends, whether the estate is heritable or devisable in that scenario, or the distinction between the holder and the cestui que vie. Researchers should supplement Burrill with Blackstone's Commentaries (Book II) and Kent's Commentaries on American Law for fuller doctrinal treatment.
Notably, Burrill's adjacent entries for "poure" (poor) and "pouwer" (power) are unrelated Law French terms that happen to fall nearby alphabetically. These should not be confused with the property law term pour autre vie despite their proximity in the dictionary text.
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Jurisdictional Note
The estate pour autre vie was received into American common law from English property law and is recognized across common law jurisdictions. Some states have modified or abolished traditional life estate doctrines through property reform statutes; researchers working in states that have adopted the Uniform Trust Code or revised their nonprobate transfer laws should verify how those reforms affect measuring-life estates before relying solely on common law doctrine.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia:
- Life Estates (primary reference for the doctrinal framework)
- Future Interests (for remainder and reversion interests that follow a pour autre vie estate)
- Estates in Land (for classification of freehold estates and historical hierarchy)
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