Legal Dictionary of Pakistan

fee tail

An estate that is inheritable only by specified descendants of the original grantee, and that endures until its current holder dies without issue (e.g., "to Albert and the heirs of his body"). ( Most jurisdictions - except Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island - have abolished the fee tail. - Also termed entailed estate; estate tail; tenancy in tail; entail; feodum talliatum. See ENTAIL; TAIL. "The name fee tail comes from the French tailler (to carve) and probably meant that the grantor was able to carve a fee to his exact prescription. This carving could be carried to great lengths and the land could be limited to male descendants generally - fee tail male general; to female issue - fee tail female; or to issue of a specific wife - fee tail special. In the latter case, if the specified wife died, the holder of the estate was said to have a fee tail with possibility of issue extinct - a type of life estate." John E. Cribbet, Principles of the Lace of Property 47 (2d ed. 1975). "If we cannot resist the temptation to say that De Donis permitted the creation of tailor-made estates, we can at least argue that it is not a pun. Our word 'tailor' and the word 'tail,' as used in 'fee tail,' come from the same source - the French tailler, to cut. The word 'tail' in 'fee tail' has nothing to do with that which wags the dog. The estate in fee tail was a cut estate - either cut in the sense that the collateral heirs were cut out, or cut in the sense that the estate was carved into a series of discrete life-possession periods to be enjoyed successively by A and his lineal heirs .... We know of no state in the United States that recognizes the estate in fee tail in its strict 1285-1472 form. Wherever it is recognized, the tenant in tail in possession may disentail it by simple deed. In a number of states, the estate in fee tail has been abolished." Thomas F. Bergin & Paul G. Haskell, Preface to Estates in Land and Future Interests 30, 32 (2d ed. 1984).