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Property drills are chains, and the discipline being trained is link by link bookkeeping: the state of the title stated at every event, the procedure boxes run where triggered, the diagram drawn before the prose. Two original questions below, the conveyance chain with a full model answer and the recording puzzle with a self grading key. Doctrine in the hub, the room in the exam guide, protocol in how to use practice exams.
O conveys Greenacre to A for life, then to B if B graduates from law school, and if B never graduates, to C. At the conveyance, B is a first year law student.
Two years later, A dies while B is a third year. State the title at each point, including any Rule Against Perpetuities analysis.
At the conveyance: A holds a life estate. B holds a contingent remainder in fee simple, contingent because graduation is an unmet condition precedent. C holds an alternative contingent remainder, taking if B's condition fails.
And O retains a reversion, the link most answers donate, because where all remainders are contingent, the grantor keeps the fallback. RAP, run as the procedure: the interests policed are B's and C's contingent remainders. Measuring life: B.
The invalidating story attempt fails, B's interest must vest, graduation, or fail, death or abandonment settled at B's death at the latest, within B's own life, and C's alternative resolves at the same moment; no story reaches beyond a life in being plus twenty one years, so both interests are valid. At A's death: B has not yet graduated, so the condition precedent is unmet and B's remainder cannot take. At common law the destructibility doctrine would destroy the contingent remainder outright; most jurisdictions have abolished destructibility, and under the modern rule O's reversion becomes possessory in fee simple, subject to executory interests in B, who divests O by graduating, and in C, who takes if B never does, with one line noting that your professor's coverage decides which regime to run.
Two years on, when B graduates, B's interest vests and divests O. Every event, every interest, the grantor's column included, the box run in the open: that is the entire rubric of this archetype.
Day 1: O deeds Blackacre to A for 50,000; A does not record. Day 5: O deeds Blackacre to B for 60,000; B has no knowledge of A and records on Day 6. Day 7: A records.
Day 8: B sells to C for 70,000; C knows all about A's deed and records. Who owns Blackacre in a notice jurisdiction, and in a race notice jurisdiction?
Full credit states the act before applying it and runs the chain purchaser by purchaser. Notice jurisdiction: B prevails over A at the Day 5 moment of purchase, a subsequent bona fide purchaser without notice, actual, constructive, or inquiry, and A's unrecorded deed gave none; A's Day 7 recording comes too late to change B's already vested priority. Race notice: B still prevails, without notice and first to record, Day 6 before Day 7.
Then the engineered point: C takes good title in both regimes despite actual knowledge of A, under the shelter rule, a purchaser from a protected buyer inherits the protection, or the recording system would strand every BFP with unsellable land; failing to name the shelter rule is where this question separates answers. One closing line on A's remedy: an action against O, whose double dealing created the mess. Deduct if the act was applied without being stated, or if the analysis ran as one blended paragraph rather than purchaser by purchaser.
Your professor's past exams, then a dedicated future interests problem set, this is the one course where a drill book earns its shelf space, then released exams from other sections. Chain drills are also cheap to self manufacture: change one word in any class conveyance, so long as to but if, and reclassify, which is exactly the rep the flowchart in the outline guide exists to serve. Every miss goes to the error log as either a vocabulary gap, fix with the flashcards, or a procedure gap, fix by rerunning the box.
A three conveyance chain in under ten minutes by finals, diagram included. Property rewards drilled recall more than any other exam, and speed here funds the minutes the essay archetypes need.
Yes, briefly: the failed attempt at an invalidating story is the proof of validity, and showing it is the credit. Valid, no RAP problem, unexplained, earns the conclusion's point and forfeits the analysis points.
A timeline of events and a party map, interests listed under each holder, updated at every event. The diagram is the bookkeeping, and Property errors are bookkeeping errors before they are doctrine errors.
Written by Ali, Georgetown Law, founder of Lovare Institut.
July 30, 2026
July 30, 2026