The Rule Against Perpetuities used to give us heartburn. It used to turn our stomachs. It made us edgy and nauseated when we were in law school and studying for the bar exam, as if we had way too many shots of espresso, so we did what most attorneys do when they enter the practice of law: We banished all but the most cursory recollections of the Rule Against Perpetuities from our minds, and hoped (and prayed) that we would never see or hear about it again.

It wasn’t until one of us watched the 2011 film The Descendants that the Rule Against Perpetuities reappeared in our lives.