Definition
A reversion (plural: reversions) is a future interest in real property retained by a grantor who transfers a lesser estate than the one the grantor holds. When the transferred estate ends — whether by expiration of a lease, death of a life tenant, or failure of a condition — the property reverts automatically to the original grantor or the grantor's heirs. No additional conveyance is required; the right of possession returns by operation of law.
Reversions arise most commonly in three situations:
1. LANDLORD AND TENANT: When a landlord leases property, the landlord retains a reversion. The tenant holds a present possessory interest; the landlord holds the future interest. When the lease term ends, possession reverts to the landlord. This is the most frequently encountered form of reversion in modern practice.
2. LIFE ESTATES: When a grantor conveys a life estate — "to A for life" — the grantor retains a reversion in fee simple. Upon A's death, the property returns to the grantor or the grantor's successors in interest.
3. FEE TAIL AND DEFEASIBLE FEES (historical): Under older common law, a grantor who conveyed a fee tail also retained a reversion should the grantee's bloodline fail. Most American jurisdictions have abolished the fee tail, but reversionary interests arising from defeasible fees (fee simple determinable, fee simple subject to condition subsequent) remain relevant in modern property law.
A reversion is distinguished from a remainder in that a reversion is always retained by the grantor; a remainder is a future interest created in a third party. Both are present, vested property interests — they exist now, even though the right to possession lies in the future.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Plural of reversion." In general English, a reversion is a return to a previous state, practice, or condition — as in evolutionary biology ("reversion to type") or everyday speech ("a reversion to old habits").
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Webster's defines reversion broadly as "a return to a former state" and includes the legal sense as one application among several, alongside biological and general usage.
The gap between ordinary and legal meaning is meaningful. In everyday English, reversion is largely metaphorical — returning to a prior condition or behavior. In property law, reversion is a precise technical concept: a present vested future interest in land, not merely a return of something. A researcher encountering "reversion" in a historical deed, estate document, or lease must read it as a term of art, not a description of a physical or metaphorical return.
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Common Confusion
REVERSION vs. REMAINDER: These are the most commonly conflated future interests. Both describe future rights to possession, but a reversion is held by the original grantor (or grantor's successors); a remainder is held by a third party named in the conveyance. If a deed reads "to A for life, then to B," B holds a remainder — not a reversion. If the deed reads only "to A for life" with no named successor, the grantor retains a reversion.
REVERSION vs. RIGHT OF REENTRY: A fee simple determinable ends automatically when the stated condition occurs, triggering a reversion known as a possibility of reverter. A fee simple subject to condition subsequent does not end automatically — the grantor must exercise a right of reentry (also called a power of termination) to reclaim the property. Historically and in many older sources, these were treated loosely; modern property law distinguishes them carefully.
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Why It Matters in Research
Reversions are foundational to understanding both historical land transfers and modern landlord-tenant law. Several navigational points matter for corpus researchers:
LEASE DOCUMENTS: In virtually any lease — commercial, residential, agricultural — the landlord's reversionary interest is the structural backbone. Research into landlord rights, lease termination, and property damage claims will repeatedly invoke the reversion concept. The landlord's right to sue a third party for injury to the property often depends on recognizing that the landlord's reversionary interest itself can be damaged.
HISTORICAL DEED LANGUAGE: Older conveyances, particularly colonial-era and early American deeds, used reversion terminology in ways that do not map neatly onto modern categories. Researchers working with pre-20th century property records should be cautious about assuming that historical usage aligns with the current common law framework.
FEE TAIL JURISDICTIONS: A small number of states retained modified versions of the fee tail into the 20th century. Reversions arising from fee tail conveyances in those jurisdictions require attention to state-specific statutory treatment.
POSSIBILITY OF REVERTER vs. REVERSION: In older sources, including some editions of Bouvier's and early treatises, "reversion" was sometimes used loosely to cover what modern law calls the possibility of reverter (the future interest following a fee simple determinable). Modern readers should not assume these terms were used consistently in historical sources.
CORPUS CONNECTIONS: Reversion appears across the Law Mind corpus not only in property law materials but also in landlord-tenant disputes within employment and commercial contexts, in estate planning documents, and in municipal law where governments convey land subject to use conditions. Researchers following a reversion issue may need to move between property, contract, and local government law materials.
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Historical Dictionary Support
The Bouvier's entry provided in the source material does not address reversion directly — the supplied text covers "land" and related real estate terminology. This is a gap in the source data, not an absence of doctrine. Bouvier's Law Dictionary does, in its full editions, address reversion as a settled common law concept, defining it in terms consistent with Blackstone's Commentaries framework: an estate left in the grantor after a particular estate is carved out and granted away.
Blackstone (Commentaries, Book II) treated the reversion as one of the primary future interests recognized at common law, alongside remainders, and grounded it firmly in the doctrine of seisin — the grantor who never fully surrendered seisin retained the reversion. This feudal underpinning is worth noting for historical research: what modern law explains in terms of estate theory, older sources often explained through the lens of seisin and tenure.
American treatises of the 19th century, following Kent's Commentaries and Story's equity materials, generally adopted Blackstone's framework with modifications for the abolition of feudal tenure in most states. The core concept — grantor retains what was not given away — survived those modifications intact.
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Jurisdictional Note
The basic doctrine of reversions is uniform across common law jurisdictions in the United States. Significant variation exists in how states treat the defeasible fees that generate possibilities of reverter versus rights of reentry, and in statutory time limits (marketable title acts) that may extinguish old reversionary interests after a set period. Researchers dealing with reversions arising from pre-20th century conveyances should check whether the relevant state has a marketable title act that may have cut off the interest.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Property Law Encyclopedia — Mortgages: Reverse Mortgages (HECM): Tangential connection. The reverse mortgage context involves a lender's interest in property that shares some structural features with reversionary thinking, though the instruments are legally distinct. Researchers should not conflate the two.
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