at common law to this form of rent. Copyhold rents and rents reserved on lease fall into this class.
Rent Charge.—A rent charge is a grant of an annual sum payable out of lands in which the grantor has an estate. It may be in fee, in tail, for life-the most common form-or for years. It must be created by deed or will, and may be either at common law or under the Statute of Uses (1536). The grantor has no reversion, and the grantee has at common law no power of distress, though such power may be given him by the instrument creating the rent charge. The Statute of Uses (1536) gave a power of distress for a rent charge created under the statute. The Conveyancing Act 1881, § 44, has given a power of distress for a sum due on any rent charge which is twenty-one days in arrear. By § 45 a power of redemption of certain perpetual rents in the nature of rent charges is given to the owner of the land out of which the rent issues. Rent charges granted since April 26th, 1855, otherwise than by marriage settlement or will for a life or lives or for any estate determinable on a life or lives must, in order to bind lands against purchasers, mortgagees or creditors, be registered in the Land Registry in Lincoln’s Inn Fields (judgments Act 1855 and Land Charges Act 1900). In certain other cases it is also necessary to register rent charges, for instance, under the Improvement of Land Act 1864 and the Land Transfer Acts 1875 and 1897. Rent charges are barred by non-payment or non-acknowledgment for twelve years. The period of limitation for the arrears of such rent is six years.
Various Forms of Rent Charge.—Forms of rent charge of special interest are tithe rent charge (see Tithes), and the rent charges formerly used for the purpose of creating “faggot votes.” The device was adopted of creating parliamentary voters by splitting up freehold interests into a number of rent-charges of the annual value of 40s., so as to satisfy the freeholders' franchise. But such rent charges are now rendered ineffective by the Representation of the People Act 1884, § 4, which enacts (subject to a saving for existing rights and an exception in favour of owners of tithe rent charge) that a man shall not be entitled to be registered as a voter in respect of the ownership of any rent charge.,
A rent charge reserved without power of distress is termed a rent-seck (reditus siccus) or “dry rent,” from the absence of the power of distress. But, as power of distress for rents-seck was given by the Landlord and Tenant Act 1736, the legal effect of such rents has been since the act the same as that of a rent charge.
Other Varieties of Rent.—Rents of assize or Quit rents are a relic of the old customary rents. They are presumed to have been established by usage, and cannot be increased or diminished. A Quit rent (quietus reditus) is a yearly payment made from time immemorial by freeholders or copy holders of a manor to the lord. The term implies that the tenant thereby becomes free and quit from all other services. Owing to the change in the value of money, these rents are now of little value. Under the Conveyancing Act 1881 (s. 45) they may be compulsorily redeemed by the freeholi tenant; and the Copyhold Act 1894 provides similarly for their extinction in the case of manors. Quit rents, like ordinary rent charges, are barred by non-payment, or non-acknowledgment, for twelve years. Those paid by freeholders are called chief rents. Fee farm rents are rents reserved on grants in fee. According to some authorities, they must be at least one-fourth of the value of the lands. They, like quit rents, now occur only in manors, unless existing before the Statute of Quia Emptores or created by the crown (see Real Property). A rent which is equivalent or nearly equivalent in amount to the full annual value of the land is a rack rent. A rent which falls appreciably short of a rack rent is usually styled a ground rent (q.v.). It is generally reserved on land which the lessee agrees to cover with buildings, and is calculated on the value of the land, though the buildings to be erected increase the security for the rent and revert to the essor at the end of the term. A dead rent is a fixed annual sum paid by a person working a mine or quarry, in addition to royalties varying according to the amount of minerals taken.
The object of a dead rent is twofold-first, to provide a specified income on which the lessor can rely; secondly (and this is the more important reason), as a security that the mine will be worked, and worked with reasonable rapidity. Rents in kind still exist to a limited extent; thus the corporation of London is tenant of some lands in Shropshire by payment to the crown of an annual rent of a fagot. All peppercorn, or nominal, rents seem to fall under this head.[1] The object of the peppercorn rent is to secure the acknowledgment by the tenant of the landlord’s right. In modern building leases a peppercorn rent is sometimes reserved as the rent for the first few years. Services rendered in lieu of payment by tenants in grand and petit serjeanty may also be regarded as examples of rents in kind. Grand serjeanty is a form of tenure in chivalry under which the king’s tenants (servientes) in chief owed special military or personal services to the king; e.g. carrying his banner. Petit serjeanty—a form of tenure in socage—was usually applied to tenure of the king or a mesne lord by some fixed service of trivial value, e.g. feeding his hounds. These forms of tenure were abolished in 1660. Labour rents are represented by those cases, not unfrequent in agricultural leases, where the tenant is bound to render the landlord a certain amount of team work or other labour as a part of his rent. It was held in the court of queen’s bench in 1845 that tenants who occupied houses on the terms of sweeping the parish church and of ringing the church bell paid rent within the meaning of the Limitation Act of 1833, (see Doe v. Benham (1845), 7 Q.B. 976).
As to the apportionment of rents, see Apportionment.
Payment of Rent.—Rent is due in the morning of the day appointed for payment, but a tenant is not in arrears until after midnight on that day. Rent made payable in advance by agreement between a landlord and his tenant is called forehand rent. It is not uncommon in letting a furnished house, or as to the last quarter of the Laws as to payment. term of a lease of unfurnished premises, to stipulate that the rent shall be paid in advance. As soon as such rentis payable under the agreement the landlord has the same rights in regard to it as he has in the case of ordinary rent. If a tenant pays his rent before the day on which it is due, he runs the risk of being called upon in certain circumstances to pay it over again. Such a payment is an advance to the landlord, subject to an agreement that, when the rent becomes due, the advance shall be treated as a fulfilment of the tenant’s obligation to pay rent. The payment is, therefore, generally speaking, a defence to an action by the landlord or his heirs. But if the landlord mortgages his reversion, either before or after the advance, the assignee will, by giving notice to the tenant, before the proper rent-day, to pay rent to him, become entitled to the rent then falling due. Payment by cheque is conditional payment only, and if the cheque is dishonoured the original obligation revives. Where a cheque in payment of rent is lost in the course of transmission through the post, the loss falls on the tenant, unless the landlord has expressly or impliedly authorized it to be forwarded in that way: and the landlord’s consent to take the risk of such transmission will not be inferred from the fact that payments were ordinarily made in this manner in the dealings between the parties. A tenant may deduct from his rent (i) the “landlord’s property tax” (on the annual value of the premises for income tax purposes), which is paid by the tenant, if the statute imposing the tax authorizes the deduction (which should be made from the rent next due after the payment); (ii) taxes or rates which the landlord had undertaken to pay but had not paid, payment having thereupon been made by the tenant; (iii) payments made by the tenant which ought to have been made by the landlord, e.g. rent due to a superior landlord; (iv) compensation under the Agricultural Holdings Acts 1883–1900.
Remedies for Non-payment of Rent.—A landlord’s main remedy for non-payment of rent is distress (Lat. distringere, to draw asunder, detain, occupy), i.e. the right to seize all goods found upon the demised premises, whether those of the tenant or of a stranger, except goods specially privileged, and to detain and, if need be, to sell them, in satisfaction of his claim. The requisites of a valid distress are these: (a) There must be “ a certain and proper rent,” i.e. rent due in respect of an actual tenancy of corporeal hereditaments: (b) the rent must be in arrear; (c) there must be a reversion in the person dis training; and (d) there must be goods on the premises liable to be dis trained.
- ↑ When peppercorn rents were instituted, in the middle ages, they were not, however, nominal, the cost of spices being then very great. A peppercorn rent, generally an obligation to pay I lb of pepper at the usual rent days, constituted a substantial impost even as late as the 18th century.
