What is "fee simple"

Fee \Fee\ (f[=e]), n. [OE. fe, feh, feoh, cattle, property, money, fief, AS. feoh cattle, property, money; the senses of ``property, money,'' arising from cattle being used in early times as a medium of exchange or payment, property chiefly consisting of cattle; akin to OS. fehu cattle, property, D. vee cattle, OHG. fihu, fehu, G. vieh, Icel. f[=e] cattle, property, money, Goth. fa['i]hu, L. pecus cattle, pecunia property, money, Skr. pa[,c]u cattle, perh. orig., ``a fastened or tethered animal,'' from a root signifying to bind, and perh. akin to E. fang, fair, a.; cf. OF. fie, flu, feu, fleu, fief, F. fief, from German, of the same origin. the sense fief is due to the French. [root]249. Cf. Feud, Fief, Fellow, Pecuniary.]

1. property; possession; tenure. ``Laden with rich fee.''
   --Spenser.

   Once did she hold the gorgeous East in fee.
   --Wordsworth.

2. Reward or compensation for services rendered or to be rendered; especially, payment for professional services, of optional amount, or fixed by custom or laws; charge; pay; perquisite; as, the fees of lawyers and physicians; the fees of office; clerk's fees; sheriff's fees; marriage fees, etc.

   To plead for love deserves more fee than hate.
   --Shak.

3. (Feud. Law) A right to the use of a superior's land, as a stipend for services to be performed; also, the land so held; a fief.

4. (Eng. Law) An estate of inheritance supposed to be held either mediately or immediately from the sovereign, and absolutely vested in the owner.

   Note: All the land in England, except the crown land, is of this kind. An absolute fee, or fee simple, is land which a man holds to himself and his heirs forever, who are called tenants in fee simple. In modern writers, by fee is usually meant fee simple. A limited fee may be a qualified or base fee, which ceases with the existence of certain conditions; or a conditional fee, or fee tail, which is limited to particular heirs.
   --Blackstone.

5. (Amer. Law) An estate of inheritance belonging to the owner, and transmissible to his heirs, absolutely and simply, without condition attached to the tenure.

   Fee estate (Eng. Law), land or tenements held in fee in consideration or some acknowledgment or service rendered to the lord.

   Fee farm (Law), land held of another in fee, in consideration of an annual rent, without homage, fealty, or any other service than that mentioned in the feoffment; an estate in fee simple, subject to a perpetual rent.
   --Blackstone.

   Fee farm rent (Eng. Law), a perpetual rent reserved upon a conveyance in fee simple.

   Fee fund (Scot. Law), certain court dues out of which the clerks and other court officers are paid.

   Fee simple (Law), an absolute fee; a fee without conditions or limits.

   Buy the fee simple of my life for an hour and a quarter.
   --Shak.

   Fee tail (Law), an estate of inheritance, limited and restrained to some particular heirs.
   --Burill.

n. The private ownership of property (real estate) in which the owner has the right to control, use, and transfer the property at will.

n. a fee without limitation to any class of heirs; they can sell it or give it away

In English law, a fee simple or fee simple absolute is an estate in land, a form of freehold ownership. It is a way that real estate may be owned in common law countries, and is the highest possible ownership interest that can be held in real property. Allodial title is reserved to governments under a civil law structure. The rights of the fee simple owner are limited by government powers of taxation, compulsory purchase, police power, and escheat, and it could also be limited further by certain encumbrances or conditions in the deed, such as, for example, a condition that required the land to be used as a public park, with a reversion interest in the grantor if the condition fails; this is a fee simple conditional.