fee-tail
Verb (transitive): To limit the inheritance of property to a specific, designated line of heirs, preventing the current owner or any subsequent owner from selling or bequeathing it to anyone outside that specified line. This creates a conditional and inalienable form of ownership.
This verb is used in the specific context of property law and historical land tenure. It describes the action of imposing a legal restriction on how real estate can be inherited. * The old deed fee-tailed the estate, ensuring it could only pass to the eldest male descendant. * By fee-tailing the property, the grantor sought to keep the land within the family name forever.
- The term is most commonly encountered in its past participle form, "entailed," which is used to describe the property itself or the legal condition placed upon it.
- The land was entailed to the heirs of his body.
- The corresponding noun form is "fee tail" or simply "entail," which refers to the legal estate or condition so created.
- The fee tail was finally broken, allowing the land to be sold.
- Entail (verb): The more common modern synonym for "fee-tail."
- Entail (noun): The estate or interest in land created by a fee tail.
- Fee simple: (noun) The opposite concept; ownership of land with no restrictions on inheritance or alienation.
- Tailzie (noun): The Scots law term equivalent to fee tail.
- Restrict (inheritance)
- Bind (property)
- Limit (succession)
The concept of a "fee tail" is largely historical in common law jurisdictions. It was a feudal device designed to keep large estates intact within a family lineage (e.g., "to A and the heirs of his body"). Modern property law in places like England and the United States has generally abolished or severely restricted the ability to create new fee tails, favoring the free alienability of property represented by "fee simple." The word is now primarily used in historical, legal, or literary contexts.
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limit the inheritance of property to a specific class of heirs
