- fee tail
- nouna fee limited to a particular line of heirs; they are not free to sell it or give it away• Hypernyms: ↑fee
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noun (plural fees tail)Etymology: Middle English fee taille, from Anglo-French fé taillé, from Old French fé fee, fief + taillé, taillié, past part of taillier to cut, decide, determine — more at fee, tail II (entailed): an estate in fee granted to a person and his issue or a designated class of his issue that is subject to the possibility of reversion if there is no such issue or no alternative gift to a designated person in case there is no such issue, that is subject under modern statutes to being converted into a fee simple absolute by the owner's barring the entail by executing a deed in his lifetime or to being converted to other types of estates more in harmony with present social conditions, and that is the estate created by the English Statute De Donis of 1285 or a similar statute operating upon a grant that would otherwise create a fee simple conditional — compare reversion* * *
fee tail nounAn entailed estate, which may descend only to a certain class of heirs• • •Main Entry: ↑fee* * *
fee tail,ownership of land limited to a certain class of heirs.* * *
n. (pl. fees tail) historical Law a former type of tenure of an estate in land with restrictions or entailment regarding the line of heirs to whom it may be willedOrigin:late Middle English: from Anglo-Norman French fee tailé (see , tail II)
Useful english dictionary. 2012.