Abeyance (law Fr. abbayev, to expect, wait for; Fr. bayer, to gape), a law term implying expectation, suspense, though by the signification preferred by the best authors the thing in abeyance is conceived to be in the remembrance or consideration of the law. The title to a ship captured in war is said to be in abeyance until condemnation to the captor by the prize court. So an estate of inheritance or the fee was said to be in abeyance when there was no one in being in whom it could vest, as in the case of a grant to A for life, remainder in fee to the heirs of B, who was then living: as there can be no heir of a living man, the fee was said to be in abeyance until B's death. Mr. Fearne, an acute writer upon the law of real property, denounced the theory of an abeyance as an absurd fiction; and he contended with great ability that in the case just supposed the estate of inheritance was not in abeyance during B's life, but remained in the grantor of the life estate until the happening of the condition on which it might pass to B's heirs devested him of it. The principle of abeyance, however, has always stood fast in the law, and has carried with it very practical results.

The plan of the feudal system, which required that there should always be some one ready to render the military and other feudal services to the lord, fixed the rule of the feudal, and later of the common law, that there must always be a tenant of the freehold, and that that must never be in abeyance. It was difficult for a long time, however, to get rid of the abeyance of the fee, that is, of the absolute ownership of the estate, distinguished from mere portions of it like a freehold life estate. But the recognition of the rule caused great embarrassments; for during the suspension of the fee there was no one to defend the title, or take any of those remedies in respect to the property which depended on the absolute ownership. The doctrine, therefore, came to be regarded with more and more disfavor, and its inconveniences inspired from time to time some of the most important reforms of the law. Blackstone says in one of his arguments, that the famous rule in Shelley's case owed its origin and adoption to the aversion of the common law to the suspension of estates through the operation of abeyance; and the same spirit of the law helped to break down the limitation or creation of remote and contingent remainders.