Definition
A reversion is the interest in real or personal property that remains in a grantor after the grantor has conveyed a lesser estate to another person. When the conveyed estate expires or otherwise ends, ownership reverts — that is, returns — to the grantor or the grantor's heirs by operation of law, without any additional act required.
The core idea: if you own a fee simple and convey only a life estate to someone else, you have not given away everything. The portion you retained — the right to have the property back when the life estate ends — is your reversion. It is a present, vested property interest even while the possessory estate is ongoing. The holder of a reversion does not have to wait for the triggering event to own the interest; it exists and can be transferred, devised, or inherited from the moment of the original conveyance.
Reversion is distinguished from a remainder, which is a future interest created in a third party rather than retained by the grantor. If O conveys to A for life, then to B — B holds a remainder, not a reversion. O holds nothing. If O conveys to A for life and says nothing further, O holds a reversion.
In personal property, the term is used analogously to describe a reversionary interest in personalty subject to a prior life interest or other limited interest in another person.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Reversion" in ordinary English means a return to a previous state, practice, or condition — as in "a reversion to old habits."
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Webster's defined reversion generally as "the act of returning, or the state of being returned; return," and in a legal sense as "the returning of an estate to the grantor or his heirs after the grant is ended."
The gap here matters. Ordinary speakers use "reversion" loosely to mean any kind of return or regression. In property law, it is a precise technical term describing a specific vested future interest — not a process or event, but a thing that a person owns right now. Researchers encountering "reversion" in historical documents should not assume the loose common meaning; the legal meaning was well-established and carries real transactional and doctrinal weight.
Common Confusion
Reversion is frequently confused with remainder. Both are future interests in property, but the distinction is fundamental: a reversion is retained by the grantor; a remainder is created in a third party by the same conveyance. A second common confusion arises between reversion and right of entry (also called power of termination). A right of entry arises after a fee simple subject to condition subsequent is violated and requires the grantor to take affirmative action to reclaim the estate. A reversion arises automatically by operation of law when the prior estate naturally expires. Rapalje & Lawrence flag this directly, noting that a right of entry is not a reversion.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in historical property records, deeds, and wills will encounter reversion language constantly, and precision matters. Several traps deserve attention:
First, the word "reversion" appears in older documents both as the name of the future interest itself and loosely as a description of the event of return. Context determines which meaning applies.
Second, because a reversion is a present vested interest, it was freely alienable and devisable at common law — meaning it will appear as an asset in estates, as collateral in financing arrangements, and as a subject of conveyance in its own right. Do not assume that a reversion is merely a contingency awaiting resolution; it had real market value and was actively traded.
Third, jurisdictional treatment of reversions in the context of future interests reform matters. Several states have modified or abolished certain future interests through statute (influenced by the Uniform Statutory Rule Against Perpetuities and the Restatement Third of Property), and these changes can affect whether what historical sources call a reversion survives under modern law in the same form.
Fourth, in the corpus, reversion language bleeds into adjacent doctrines: landlord-tenant law (where the landlord always retains a reversion in a leased premises), trust law (where a settlor may retain a reversionary interest), and personal property contexts as noted by Rapalje & Lawrence. Researchers should track the reversion concept across all three.
Finally, the encyclopedia entries in this corpus tagged with "reverse" terminology — reverse mortgages, reverse veil piercing, reverse discrimination — are terminologically unrelated to the property law reversion. Do not conflate them.
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence treat the reversion in two registers. In real property, it is the classic retained future interest following a conveyance of a lesser estate. In personal property, they acknowledge the extension of the concept to cover reversionary interests in personalty subject to a life interest — a usage that was contested in some jurisdictions but recognized in practice.
Their citation to 4 Kent's Commentaries at 354 and 2 Blackstone's Commentaries at 175 anchors the term firmly in classical common law property doctrine. Both Kent and Blackstone treated the reversion as the foundation of future interests analysis, distinguishing it carefully from remainders. The citation to 12 N.Y. 121 for the proposition that a right of entry is not a reversion reflects a live doctrinal dispute in the American courts that Kent had helped frame — one that remains analytically important today.
The citation to estates in reversion appearing in wills (noted in Rapalje & Lawrence) signals that courts regularly had to interpret testamentary language to determine whether a testator had conveyed the full fee or retained a reversion. This is a live research issue when working with historical probate records.
What historical dictionaries generally do not address: the Restatement (First and Third) of Property's reformulation of future interests terminology, and the impact of perpetuities reform on reversions that were coupled with contingent remainders.
Jurisdictional Note
All common law jurisdictions recognize the reversion as a basic category of property interest. Variation arises primarily in two contexts: states that have enacted the Uniform Trust Code or modernized future interests statutes may treat certain reversionary interests differently in trust contexts, and some states have modified landlord-tenant doctrine in ways that affect the legal significance of the landlord's reversion during a lease term.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Property Law Encyclopedia — Mortgages: Reverse Mortgages (HECM) [property_68]: Note that this entry addresses reverse mortgages, a financing product, not the property law reversion. Researchers should not conflate the two. No encyclopedia entry in the current corpus directly addresses future interests or reversion doctrine; researchers should consult the primary property law sources referenced in the Historical Dictionary Support section.