ty reserved by or
limited to a person, to dispose, either wholly or partially, of real or
personal property, either for his own benefit or for that of others.
Thus if A settle property upon trustees to such uses as B shall by deed
or will appoint and in default of and until such appointment to the use
of C and his heirs, B, though he has no interest in the property, can at
any time appoint the property to any one he pleases, including himself,
and C's interest which has hitherto been vested in him will be divested.
In the above case A is said to be the donor, B the donee, and the
persons in whose favour the appointment is exercised are called the
appointees. Such powers are either general or limited. A general power
is one which the appointor may exercise in favour of any person he
pleases. It is obvious that such a power is very nearly equivalent to
ownership, and consequently property which is the subject of a general
power has been made to share the liabilities of ownership. By the
Judgments Act 1838 all hereditaments over which a judgment debtor has
such a power may be seized by the sheriff under a writ of _elegit_, and
by the Bankruptcy Act 1883 similar property will vest in the trustees of
a bankrupt. By the Finance Act 1894 property of which the deceased had a
general power of appointment is subject to the payment of estate duty,
even though the power has not been exercised. A limited power is one
which can only be exercised in favour of certain specified persons or
classes; such a power is frequently inserted in marriage settlements in
which after life estates to the husband and wife a power is given to
appoint among the children of the marriage. In such a case no
appointment to any one but children of the marriage is valid. Formerly
it was held that the intention of the donor of such a power was that
each of the class which are the objects of the power should take some
part of the fund, and from this arose the equitable doctrine of illusory
appointments, by which the courts of equity set aside an appointment
which was good at law on the ground that a merely nominal share had been
appointed to one of the objects. The great difficulty of deciding what
was a nominal or illusory share caused the passing of the Illusory
Appointments Act of 1830, whereby it was enacted that no appointment
should be set aside merely on the ground that a share appointed was
illusory. It was still necessary, however, that some share shoul