Oklahoma Law Review Volume 68 Number 4 2016 Response: Worthier for Whom? Katheleen Guzman University of Oklahoma College of Law Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.law.ou.edu/olr Part of the Property Law and Real Estate Commons Recommended Citation Katheleen Guzman, Response: Worthier for Whom?, 68 OKLA. L. REV. 779 (2016), https://digitalcommons.law.ou.edu/olr/vol68/iss4/3 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by University of Oklahoma College of Law Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Oklahoma Law Review by an authorized editor of University of Oklahoma College of Law Digital Commons. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. WORTHIER FOR WHOM? * KATHELEEN GUZMAN It is said, in the old books, that “a devise to the heir is void.”1 I. Introduction The law of future interests is often indicted for its relative antiquation. The critique is understandable. Medieval England was wracked with disease, battle, conquest, hardscrabble living conditions; an agricultural economy with a limited land supply and vertical ownership structure; an abiding fear of attack from without or insurrection from within; the need for the creation of a loyal defense or a stout tax collection practice to buy one; and a religious perspective faithful to the unassailable, God-given rights of those with more money, more power, or (and generally also owing to) a more fortuitous circumstance of birth.2 Both by instigation and in non- linear response came a complicated set of rules about land, which when viewed from a current perspective seem puzzling if not perverse.