Abeyance; settling litigation

Abeyance (from the Old French abeance meaning "gaping") is a state of expectancy in respect of property, titles or office, when the right to them is not vested in any one person, but awaits the appearance or determination of the true owner. In law, the term abeyance can be applied only to such future estates as have not yet vested or possibly may not vest. For example, an estate is granted to A for life, with remainder to the heir of B. During B's lifetime, the remainder is in abeyance, for until the death of A it is uncertain who is B's heir. Similarly the freehold of a benefice, on the death of the incumbent, is said to be in abeyance until the next incumbent takes possession.

The term hold in abeyance is used in lawsuits and court cases when a case is temporarily put on hold. Read more: Abeyance > Settling litigation. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abeyance.Abeyance can be used in cases where parties are interested in temporarily settling litigation while still holding the right to seek relief later if necessary. This may be considered a desirable outcome in cases where the party to the lawsuit is an organization with a transient membership and political perspective. The use of abeyance in such instances can allow such an organization to 'settle' with the party without officially binding its actions in the future, should a new group of decision makers within the organization choose to pursue taking the dispute to court.

For example, abeyance was used as a settlement method in a Canadian lawsuit involving the University of Victoria Students' Society (UVSS), the BCCLA, and a campus pro-life club to whom the UVSS denied funding. The parties agreed to settle the lawsuit by holding the case in abeyance in return for the UVSS temporarily giving resources back to the club. With this arrangement, the pro-life club held on to its right to immediately reopen the case again should the UVSS deny resources to the club in the future, and the UVSS was able to avoid an expensive legal battle it did not have the will to pursue at the time. Thus the use of abeyance provided the security of a settlement for the pro-life campus club, while preserving the student society's voting membership's ability to take the matter back to court should they choose in the future to deny resources to the club.

Other court cases may be held in abeyance when the issue may be resolved by another court or another event. This saves time and effort trying to resolve a dispute that may be made moot by the other events. During lawsuits related to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act after the Supreme Court of the United States granted certiorari in King v. Burwell, attorneys in Halbig v. Burwell requested abeyance of that case as the matter would be resolved in King and it would be a waste of time and effort to try to resolve it in the Halbig case. Read more: Abeyance > Settling litigation. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abeyance.