What is "fee tail"

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. (context legal obsolete English) An estate in land in common law wherein the land is inherited, but can not be sold, devised by will, or otherwise alienated by the owner, but which passes by operation of law to the owner's heirs upon his death.

n. a fee limited to a particular line of heirs; they are not free to sell it or give it away

In English common law, fee tail or entail is a form of trust established by deed or settlement which restricts the sale or inheritance of an estate in real property and prevents the property from being sold, devised by will, or otherwise alienated by the tenant-in-possession, and instead causes it to pass automatically by operation of law to an heir pre-determined by the settlement deed. The term fee tail is from Medieval Latin feodum talliatum, which means "cut(-short) fee", and is in contrast to " fee simple" where no such restriction exists and where the possessor has an absolute title (although subject to the allodial title of the monarch) in the property which he can bequeath or otherwise dispose of as he wishes. Equivalent legal concepts exist or formerly existed in many other European countries and elsewhere.