Habendum Clause
Categories: Real Estate
Marriage vows often include the words "to have and to hold." This phrase also comes up in real estate leases.
It might sour you a bit on the institution of marriage...or it might make you feel more romantic about the subject of real estate. Kind of a glass half-full/glass half-empty situation.
Anyway, the have/hold language marks the traditional start of a habendum clause, the section of a lease that lays out the rights and interests of the lessee. (Maybe spouses in marriage are leasing each other, making them simultaneous criss-crossing lessees in that case. We don't know...maybe it's better to drop the parallel.)
The habendum clause comes up most often in oil and gas leases. Here, they are often used to specify how long the lease runs.
It comes into play because oil and gas leases often have a primary and a secondary term. So...you might give an oil company two years to find oil on their land, but if they discover oil, they get another three years of extracting it. The habendum clause defines these parameters.