Also known as: entail · entails · entailed · entailing · entailment · fee tail · estate tail
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
An estate in land limited to the grantee's lineal descendants. The estate arises from a conveyance containing a life estate followed by a limitation to the issue of the life tenant or similar language that restricts inheritance to the direct bloodline.
Ethan Evans conveyed land to Elena Estrada and the heirs of her body. The deed created an entailed estate that Elena and her brother Eduardo Enriquez could hold together as tenants in common under the applicable state rules.
Eugene Ellsworth granted a life estate in the family farm to Edith Eberhardt with further language directing the land to her issue upon her death. The conveyance created an entailed estate in favor of Edith's lineal descendants.
Elena Estrada and her husband conveyed land to themselves and the heirs of their bodies. The deed created an entailed estate that the couple held as tenants by the entirety under the state's concurrent ownership rules.
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Eduardo Enriquez received a grant of ancestral farmland to him and the heirs of his body. Because the Statute De Donis remained in force without modification, the conveyance created an entailed estate rather than a fee simple.
Edith Eberhardt held an entailed estate in a downtown parcel. She executed a proper inter vivos conveyance that met the state's formal requirements for disentailing and thereby transferred full ownership to a buyer.
Erika Echevarria held an entailed estate and conveyed a leasehold interest without using the formal disentailing process. The interest she created remained subject to defeat by her lineal heirs upon her death.
The surviving spouse receives the same dower interest as if the deceased had held fee simple absolute, yet that interest remains subordinate to any power of termination, executory interest, or possibility of reverter that restricted the fee tail.
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A conveyance that limits an estate for life followed by a remainder to the issue of the life tenant or to the heirs of the life tenant's body creates the entailed estate in favor of those descendants.
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Yes. The estate may be created to be held by two or more persons as tenants in common, as joint tenants when permitted by state law, or as tenants by the entirety when the grantees are or may become husband and wife.
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The holder may create any interest that a fee simple owner could create, either through a formal disentailing conveyance or, when that formality is not required, subject to defeat by the remaindermen upon the holder's death.
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…Harlan (joined by Justices Stewart and White) I believe the decision of the Court represents poor constitutional law and entails harmful consequences for the country at large. How serious these consequences may prove to be only time can tell. But the basic flaws in the Court's justification seem to me readily…