Remainder
National Real Estate Exam glossary · Property Ownership
Definition
The future interest held by a third party who is to receive a property upon the natural termination of a prior estate, most commonly a life estate. The holder is the remainderman; if instead the property returns to the grantor, that interest is a reversion.
Remainder in plain English
A remainder is a future turn to own a property that's already promised to someone else. Say Grandma gets to live in a house for the rest of her life, and when she passes it goes to her granddaughter — the granddaughter holds the "remainder," and she's called the remainderman. She owns nothing to use today, but her future ownership is locked in and can't be taken away. (If the house instead bounced back to whoever originally gave it away, that return trip would be called a reversion, not a remainder.)
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