Definition
A power coupled with an interest is a legal authority to act upon a subject matter in which the holder of the power also holds a property interest. The two elements must coexist: the right to exercise the power, and an independent interest in the thing upon which the power operates. Because the holder's own stake is bound up in the authority, the law treats such a power as more than mere agency — it is itself a property right.
The doctrine appears most prominently in two distinct legal contexts:
1. Agency law: An agent holds a power coupled with an interest when the agent has been given authority to act on behalf of a principal and also possesses an independent interest in the subject matter of that authority — typically because the agent has advanced money, provided value, or holds a lien against the property involved. In this setting, the power coupled with an interest is irrevocable by the principal and survives the principal's death or incapacity, unlike ordinary agency authority.
2. Property and trusts law: A power coupled with an interest describes a donee of a power (such as a testamentary or inter vivos power of appointment) who holds not only the power to appoint but also a beneficial or property interest in the assets subject to the power. Courts and commentators have debated whether this configuration produces the same irrevocability consequences as in the agency context, and the analysis is more nuanced here.
The defining contrast is with the naked power — an authority to act that carries no ownership stake or independent interest in the subject matter. Naked powers are generally revocable at will and terminate on the death of the grantor.
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Common Confusion
POWER COUPLED WITH AN INTEREST vs. INTEREST IN THE PROCEEDS. These two configurations are frequently conflated. A power is coupled with an interest only when the holder has an interest in the property or subject matter itself — not merely an interest in the economic proceeds that may flow from exercising the power. An agent entitled to a commission upon sale has an interest in the proceeds, not an interest in the property being sold. The distinction matters because only a true power coupled with an interest in the subject matter produces irrevocability. Courts have not always applied this line consistently, and historical sources often blur it.
POWER COUPLED WITH AN INTEREST vs. AGENCY COUPLED WITH AN INTEREST. These phrases describe the same legal concept from different vantage points. "Agency coupled with an interest" is the preferred framing in classical agency law; "power coupled with an interest" is the preferred framing in property and equity contexts. Researchers will encounter both in the corpus depending on the era and subject matter of the source.
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Core Elements
For a power to qualify as coupled with an interest — and thus irrevocable — courts have generally required:
1. A valid power or authority to act with respect to specific property or subject matter.
2. An independent, pre-existing interest in the agent or donee in that same subject matter — not merely in the proceeds of its exercise.
3. The interest and the power must be created simultaneously or the interest must have preceded the grant of power; an interest acquired after the power is granted does not, under traditional analysis, render the power irrevocable.
All three elements must be present. Absence of any one reduces the arrangement to a naked or revocable power.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term sits at the intersection of agency law, property law, and trusts and estates, which means the same phrase carries different doctrinal weight depending on where it appears in the corpus. Researchers should not assume that a source using the phrase in an agency context is stating rules applicable to powers of appointment, and vice versa.
The irrevocability consequence is the operational heart of the doctrine. When a researcher encounters a dispute over whether a principal improperly revoked an agent's authority, or whether a grantor effectively terminated a power before it was exercised, the question almost always turns on whether the power was coupled with an interest. Tracing that determination requires attention to how courts in the relevant jurisdiction and era defined the "interest" element — because the interest-in-the-proceeds versus interest-in-the-subject-matter distinction has been applied inconsistently across American jurisdictions and across time.
In historical sources, the doctrine is frequently discussed in the context of mortgages and secured lending. A mortgagee given authority to sell mortgaged property upon default was a paradigmatic example: the mortgagee held an interest in the property itself and therefore could not be stripped of the power to sell by the mortgagor's revocation or death. Researchers working in pre-20th-century commercial and real property materials will encounter this framing regularly.
In modern trusts and estates materials, the connection between a donee's beneficial interest and the scope or tax treatment of a power of appointment implicates related but distinct doctrinal terrain. The irrevocability rationale from agency law does not map cleanly onto the law of powers of appointment, and researchers should be alert to sources that treat them as equivalent without analysis.
The term as it appears in the Black's 2nd Ed. Supplemental entry uses the older spelling variant "ooufled" in the source scan — a transcription artifact. This is a digitization or typesetting error for "coupled." Researchers searching the corpus for this term may need to try both the correct spelling and OCR-degraded variants depending on the source format.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) Supplemental defines the term concisely and correctly: it is "a right or power to do some act, together with an interest in the subject-matter on which the power is to be exercised," contrasted with "a naked power, which is a mere authority to act, not accompanied by any interest of the donee in the subject-matter of the power." This formulation captures the classical doctrine accurately and remains useful as a baseline.
What the Black's entry does not address is the contested question of timing — whether the interest must be contemporaneous with or precede the grant of power, or whether a subsequent interest can suffice. It also does not distinguish between interest in the subject matter and interest in the proceeds, a gap that became significant in American case law. Researchers relying solely on this entry for litigation or transactional analysis will need to supplement it with primary authority.
No Bouvier's, Burrill's, or other shelf dictionary entry was supplied for this term. The concept is well-treated in classical equity and agency treatises, including Story's Commentaries on the Law of Agency, which gave the doctrine much of its 19th-century American shape.
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Jurisdictional Note
American jurisdictions have broadly accepted the doctrine but differ on what qualifies as a sufficient "interest" in the subject matter. Some states have codified aspects of the rule in their agency or uniform law statutes, which may modify or supersede the common law formulation. Researchers working in a specific jurisdiction should confirm whether statutory enactments — particularly under Uniform Power of Attorney acts or commercial code provisions — have altered the traditional analysis.
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