Use (law)

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Use" law – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (September 2014) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Use, as a term in the property law of common law countries, amounts to a recognition of the duty of a person to whom property has been conveyed for certain purposes, to carry out those purposes. In this context "use" is equivalent to "benefit".

Uses were equitable or beneficial interests in land. In early law a property owner could not dispose of his estate by will nor could religious houses acquire it.^[1] As a method of avoiding certain common law rules, the practice arose of making feoffments to the use of, or upon trust for, persons other than those to whom the seisin or legal possession was delivered, to which the equitable jurisdiction of the chancellor gave effect. The Statute of Uses was passed in 1536 in an attempt to remedy the abuses which it was said were occasioned by this evasion of the law. However, the Statute failed to accomplish its purpose.