In 1279, King Edward I of England faced a serious fiscal crisis. Wealthy landowners were continuously bequeathing vast estates to the Catholic Church. Land held by religious institutions was said to be in 'mortmain'—literally translated as the 'dead hand'—because the Church was a perpetual institution that never died, married, or produced feudal heirs.
Consequently, the Crown lost massive tax revenues, wardship fees, and military service obligations whenever property crossed into church ownership. To stop this drain on royal power and tax income, Edward I enacted the Statute of Mortmain, strictly prohibiting any land transfers to religious bodies without an explicit royal license. However, medieval English lawyers and landowners quickly devised an ingenious loophole known as 'the Use' (derived from the Latin 'opus').
Instead of transferring land title directly to a church, a landowner would grant legal ownership to a trusted group of friends or secular trustees, who were instructed to hold the land 'for the use of' the church or intended beneficiary. Because the official legal title remained with living, secular individuals, the Statute of Mortmain was bypassed entirely, while the Church enjoyed all the revenues and benefits of the land. This medieval legal fiction laid the exact foundation for modern equity and trust law.
Over centuries, these 'uses' developed into complex corporate structures and family trusts used worldwide today to manage wealth, minimize tax burdens, and safeguard assets, demonstrating that tax avoidance strategies have spurred legal innovation for over seven hundred years.