EDITORIAL NOTE-Professor Rood's twenty years' teaching of Real Property at the University of Michigan renders any introduction to our readers unnecessary, and any comment on the importance of the topic discussed herein superfluous; but his many friends will be pleased to know that Detroit now claims this eminent authority on Real Property Law as her own. He is no longer teaching but is practicing law, with Wallace Visscher, under the firm name of Rood & Visscher, at Suite 637, Dime Bank Building, Detroit, Michigan.

Are options which may at the pleasure of the owner of the option be exercised at once, at a future time not measured by lives nor years, or, if he please, not be exercised at all, void by reason of the rule against perpetuities? In discussing this question let us remember that the rule against perpetuities relates to the vesting of future interests in property real or personal. It has nothing to do with the time of enjoyment or possession, neither the commencement of it nor the duration of it, nor even whether there ever shall be any possession. For example, a gift to A for a 1,000 years, remainder to B for life, gives B a present vested interest, unaffected by the rule against perpetuities, although it is by no means certain that B will live enough more than a 1,000 years ever to enjoy the possession.1

Let us also remember that interests in prop erty real or personal are divisible in a great variety of ways, and that however divided the rule against perpetuities is laible to be violated by the remote vesting of any interest in any part. For example, the property may be divided between several as point tenants or tenants in common, as individuals or as a class; one may have the legal interest, another the equitable; it may be divided vertically, the east half to A, the west half to B; A may be given the legal interest, B the equitable; A may be given the present interest, B the future; A may be given the dominant interest, B the servient, as if B has the right of possession, A the right of way over it, or take a profit á prendre from it, as to cut wood, dig ore, carry away earth, etc.; it may be

sliced horizontally, the surface given to A, the minerals to B; and any of these divisions may be made to endure forever, except the present and future. No matter how it be divided, the rule against perpetuities is concerned only with the division of any of these interests (surface, mineral, dominant, servient, legal, equitable, or the like) into present and future. If there is a possibility, no matter how improbable, that any future. interest will vest in right at too remote a time, the provision purporting to create such interest is absolutely void from the beginning. If, on the other hand, the right to such future estate vests at once, or is certain not to vest at too remote a time, the future interest is valid so far as the rule against perpetuities is concerned, though there be no certainty that the future estate will ever come into possession at any time.