Conveyancing and Law of Property Act 1881

42 Management of land and receipt and application of income during minority

(1) If and as long as any person who would but for this section be beneficially entitled to the possession of any land is an infant, and being a woman is also unmarried, the trustees appointed for this purpose by the settlement, if any, or if there are none so appointed, then the persons, if any, who are for the time being under the settlement trustees with power of sale of the settled land, or of part thereof, or with power of consent to or approval of the exercise of such a power of sale, or if there are none, then any persons appointed as trustees for this purpose by the Court, on the application of a guardian or next friend of the infant, may enter into and continue in possession of the land ; and in every such case the subsequent provisions of this section shall apply.

(2) The trustees shall manage or superintend the management of the land, with full power to fell timber or cut underwood from time to time in the usual course for sale, or for repairs or otherwise, and to erect, pull down, rebuild, and repair houses, and other buildings and erections, and to continue the working of mines, minerals, and quarries which have usually been worked, and to drain or otherwise improve the land or any part thereof, and to insure against loss by fire, and to make allowances to and arrangements with tenants and others, and to determine tenancies, and to accept surrenders of leases and tenancies, and generally to deal with the land in a proper and due course of management; but so that, where the infant is impeachable for waste, the trustees shall not commit waste, and shall cut timber on the same terms only, and subject to the same restrictions, on and subject to which the infant could, if of full age, cut the same.

(3) The trustees may from time to time, out of the income of the land, including the produce of the sale of timber and underwood, pay the expenses incurred in the management, or in the exercise of any power conferred by this section, or otherwise in relation to the land, and all outgoings not payable by any tenant or other person, and shall keep down any annual sum, and the interest of any principal sum, charged on the land.

(4) The trustees may apply at discretion any income which, in the exercise of such discretion, they deem proper, according to the infant's age, for his or her maintenance, education, or benefit, or pay thereout any money to the infant's parent or guardian, to be applied for the same purposes.

(5) The trustees shall lay out the residue of the income of the land in investment on securities on which they are by the settlement, if any, or by law, authorised to invest trust money, with power to vary investments ; and shall accumulate the income of the investments so made in the way of compound interest, by from time to time similarly investing such income and the resulting income of investments; and shall stand possessed of the accumulated fund arising from income of the land and from investments of income on the trusts following (namely):

(i) If the infant attains the age of twenty-one years, then in trust for the infant;

(ii) If the infant is a woman and marries while an infant, then in trust for her separate use, independently of her husband, and so that her receipt after she marries, and though still an infant, shall be a good discharge; but

(iii) If the infant dies while an infant, and being a woman without having been married, then where the infant was, under a settlement, tenant for life, or by purchase tenant in tail or tail male or tail female, on the trusts, if any, declared of the accumulated fund by that settlement; but where no such trusts are declared, or the infant has taken the land from which the accumulated fund is derived by descent, and not by purchase, or the infant is tenant for an estate in fee simple, absolute or determinable, then in trust for the infant's personal representatives, as part of the infant's personal estate ;

but the accumulations, or any part thereof, may at any time be applied as if the same were income arising in the then current year.

(6) Where the infant's estate or interest is in an undivided share of land, the powers of this section relative to the land may be exercised jointly with persons entitled to possession of, or having power to act in relation to, the other undivided share or shares.

(7) This section applies only if and as far as a contrary intention is not expressed in the instrument under which the interest of the infant arises, and shall have effect subject to the terms of that instrument and to the provisions therein contained.

(8) This section applies only where that instrument conies into operation after the commencement of this Act.