Page:North Dakota Reports (vol. 1).pdf/245

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PENFIELD v. TOWER.
221

provided that “the absolute power of alienation cannot be suspended by any limitation or condition whatever for a longer period than during the continuance of the lives of persons in being at the creation of the limitation or condition, except in the single case mentioned in § 2745.” This case is not material to the question before the court. Section 2718 declares that “every future interest is void in its creation which by any possibility may suspend the absolute power of alienation for a longer period than is prescribed in this chapter. Such power of alienation is suspended when there are no persons in being by whom an absolute interest in possession can beconveyed.” Are there, during the existence of this trust for twenty-one years beyond lives in being at the time of its creation, personsin being by whom a absolute interest in possession can be conveyed? Clearly not. The beneficiaries take no interest or estate in the land. They may merely enforce the performance of the trust in equity. The whole estate is vested in the trustees. § 2804, Comp. Laws. There is no title in any one save the trustees that can be conveyed, and the trustees can make no conveyance in contravention of the trust. Every such conveyance is void. § 2810, id. The trust is indestructible during its continuance, even with the consent of all the trustees and all of the beneficiaries. Douglas v. Cruger, 80 N. Y.15. Our statutes were taken from that state. In construing the statutes of New York with reference to this point, the court in that case said: "The trustee having no power to convey the land, his conveyance, otherwise absolutely void, could not be rendered valid by an order of the court obtained upon the joint petition of himself and Mrs. Cruger. The supreme court has not the power to destroy a valid trust. The purpose of the statute was to make these trust-estates and trust-interests indestructible and absolutely inalienable during the existence of the trust, and if they could be rendered alienable by the order of the court the whole scheme of the statute would be greatly impaired, and its purpose thwarted." See, also, Cruger v. Jones, 18 Barb. 467; Lent v. Howard, 89 N. Y. 169. Ithas been repeatedly held under the same statutes in New York that a trust suspends the absolute power of alienation of real estate and the absolute ownership of personal property.