Definition
A testamentary phrase appearing in a will that operates as a comprehensive conveyance of the testator's property, reaching both assets held at the time of execution and assets acquired after execution but before death. The phrase functions as a present-and-future property clause, signaling that the testator intends no limitation to the estate as it stands at signing. Courts interpreting this language look to whether the "shall have" component successfully captures after-acquired property, a question that turns on the jurisdiction's rules governing testamentary dispositions of property not yet owned.
Why It Matters in Research
This phrase is a term of art in will construction, and its legal effect is historically unstable. The core research trap is jurisdiction and era: early common law courts were skeptical of attempts to devise property not yet owned at the time a will was made, treating a will as speaking only to property held at execution unless the instrument used language sufficiently expansive to overcome that presumption. The "or shall have" component was the critical linguistic lever. Whether courts honored it depended on whether the jurisdiction followed the rule that a will speaks as of death (the modern default) or applied older restrictions on after-acquired property devises.
Researchers working in pre-twentieth-century American or English sources must be alert to this distinction. A case interpreting this phrase unfavorably to after-acquired property is not necessarily bad law — it may reflect a jurisdiction that had not yet adopted the ambulatory-will rule uniformly, or it may reflect a court applying a specific rule for real property versus personal property. The two categories were long treated differently, and phrases like this one were tested differently depending on whether land or goods were at stake.
The phrase also intersects with related will language. Rapalje & Lawrence cross-references it alongside "WHATSOEVER AND WHERESOEVER" and "WHATEVER SHE CAN TRANSFER," indicating that historical practitioners grouped these phrases as a family of comprehensive-coverage clauses. Researchers should treat them as a cluster: a case construing one may illuminate how courts interpreted the others. The "whatsoever and wheresoever" variant tends to carry a geographic and categorical sweep (reaching foreign and domestic property, real and personal), while the "whatever I have or shall have" formulation emphasizes temporal reach into future acquisition.
For Law Mind corpus researchers, the practical implication is that a search on this phrase will surface will construction disputes, not conveyancing documents. The interpretive question is almost always one of two types: (1) did the phrase successfully pass a specific asset to a specific beneficiary, or (2) did the after-acquired property component capture something the testator obtained between execution and death. Secondary sources on ambulatory wills and the testamentary-gift-of-after-acquired-property doctrine are the natural companions.
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence treat this as a term of art defined by its judicial construction rather than by any stable linguistic meaning, which is characteristic of how that dictionary handles will-language entries. The entry is indexical — pointing to case authority rather than offering analytical elaboration — which reflects the nineteenth-century practitioner's expectation that will phrases be understood through the cases that construed them.
The cross-references in the same entry grouping are instructive. The citation to 2 Harr. & M. (Md.) 273 appears under a related death-clause entry, and the "whatsoever and wheresoever" variant draws authority from both English chancery sources (3 Atk. 494; 1 Ves. 151) and American federal and state courts (6 Pet. (U.S.) 68; 17 Mass. 73). This distribution suggests the phrase family had transatlantic currency and that American courts were actively working through the English inheritance on comprehensive testamentary language throughout the early republic period.
What historical dictionaries do not supply — and what Rapalje & Lawrence is silent on — is any systematic treatment of how the "shall have" future tense interacted with the ambulatory nature of wills. That doctrinal analysis must be reconstructed from the case law itself.
Jurisdictional Note
American states historically diverged on whether after-acquired real property passed under a will absent specific statutory authority. Many nineteenth-century states required a republication or codicil to capture land acquired after execution. The "or shall have" language was tested against these rules with inconsistent results. Modern statutes in most U.S. jurisdictions provide that a will speaks as of the testator's death, largely mooting the older problem for domestic property.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Will Construction; Future-Acquired Property; Ambulatory Will