Fee farm rents

Rents in relation to property

A fee farm rent is a rent reserved on a conveyance of lands via a fee. A Lord states that if rent be the whole value of the land, or a quarter of its value, it is called a fee farm. However the true meaning of a fee farm is a perpetual farm or rent, the name being founded on the perpetuity of the rent or service, not on the quantum. This sometimes confined the term fee farm, to rents of a certain value, which gives the property rent, only where the rent amounts to one-fourth of the value of the land; and partly from its being most usual, on grants in fee farm, not to reserve less than a third or fourth of such value.

A perpetual rent may however be reserved on a conveyance of lands in fee simple; and if a power of distress and entry be given to the grantor, his heirs and assigns, the rent will be good as a rent-charge, but not as a fee farm rent. With respect to the mode of acquiring legal possession of a property of a rent, in the case of a rent service the person entitled cannot acquire a legal possession of a property in deed before the rent becomes due; for nothing but the actual receipt of it will have that effect. As to a rent-charge, the only mode of acquiring a legal possession of a property in deed of it, when created by grant, is by the actual receipt of the whole, or of some part of it; and formerly it was usual, where a freehold estate in a rent charge was created, to pay the grantee a penny in the name of legal possession of a property of the rent. But where a rent is created by means of a conveyance to uses, the grantee immediately acquires a legal possession of a property, by the words of the statute.