Definition
"All and every other the issue of my [body/marriage/first wife/etc.]" is a phrase of limitation used in wills and testamentary instruments to extend a gift or devise beyond a named or primary class of beneficiaries to reach all additional descendants within a defined relationship. The phrase functions as an inclusive sweep clause, ensuring that no child, grandchild, or other lineal descendant qualifying within the named category is inadvertently excluded by the enumeration of specific individuals earlier in the same clause or instrument.
In practical operation, the phrase typically follows a specific bequest to named children or a primary class and then broadens the gift: "to my son John, and all and every other the issue of my body lawfully begotten." The word "other" anchors the phrase to a comparison class — those already named — while "all and every" signals exhaustive, non-selective inclusion. The tail phrase "the issue of my [body/marriage]" supplies the limiting relationship that defines membership in the extended class.
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Common Confusion
This phrase is frequently encountered alongside related testamentary formulae such as "all and singular" and "issue of the body," and researchers may conflate their functions. "All and singular" is a term of aggregation used in assignments and conveyances to capture both collective and individual items of property. "All and every other the issue of my" is not a property-aggregation clause; it is a class-definition clause operating on persons, not things. The distinction matters when interpreting whether a remainder or executory interest opens to additional takers.
The phrase should also be distinguished from a simple "issue" limitation. A bare devise "to the issue of my body" may be construed as a fee tail or a class gift depending on jurisdiction and period. The "all and every other" formulation is an amplifying modifier, not an independent limitation, and its interpretive weight depends on the primary language it accompanies.
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Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working with pre-twentieth-century wills, chancery records, or equity court opinions will encounter this phrase embedded in quoted testamentary language within reported decisions. Its significance is almost entirely contextual: courts were repeatedly asked whether the phrase was broad enough to include illegitimate children, children of a second marriage, grandchildren born after the testator's death, or issue of a predeceased child.
Several research traps exist. First, the phrase appears in truncated form in digest headnotes and abridgments, where the tail ("of my body," "of my first wife," "of my said son") is cut off — altering meaning entirely. Always locate the full instrument language before relying on a digest characterization. Second, the English and American cases do not always agree on whether "issue" in this context is words of limitation (creating a fee tail) or words of purchase (creating a class gift); the American preference for the latter diverged from English chancery practice during the nineteenth century. Third, the phrase interacts with rules against perpetuities and class-closing rules: when a class defined by "all and every other the issue of my" is not closed at the testator's death, courts disagreed on whether the rule of convenience closed it at the first distribution.
Rapalje & Lawrence index this phrase under a cluster of "in a will" entries — BODY, ALL MY ESTATE, ALL MY CLOTHES AND LINEN WHATSOEVER — suggesting the editors treated it as one of many formulaic will-construction problems catalogued by reference to English abridgments and reports rather than as a term of art warranting its own doctrinal exposition. This means the primary research value of the historical dictionaries for this phrase is bibliographic: they direct researchers to the English reporters and Comyn's Digest rather than supplying independent analysis.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence do not provide a standalone entry for this exact phrase. The phrase appears inferentially within a cluster of related will-construction entries: BODY (in a will), citing L.R. 7 Ex. 339 and L.R. 8 Ex. 160; ALL AND SINGULAR (in a will), citing 2 Mau. & S. 448 and 8 Petersd. Abr. 109; and ALL MY ESTATE (in a will), citing 4 Com. Dig. 154. The organizational logic of the Rapalje & Lawrence dictionary at this point is essentially an index to English authority, not a doctrinal synthesis.
No other shelf dictionary in the Law Mind corpus provides a discrete entry for this phrase. Jacob's Law Dictionary, Bouvier, and Black's (early editions) address "issue" and "all and singular" separately but do not treat the compound phrase as a unified term. This is itself informative: the phrase was understood by nineteenth-century practitioners as a formulaic drafting convention whose meaning was governed entirely by the surrounding instrument and the case law construing analogous language, not by a fixed legal definition.
The historical sources agree on one point: "all and every" in testamentary instruments was consistently read as language of the broadest inclusion, rejecting any argument that "every" added a limitation to what "all" had already covered. Where sources diverge is on the effect of "other" — whether it restricted the class to takers of the same degree as those previously named, or merely marked the extension past the named individuals to all remaining qualifiers regardless of degree.
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Jurisdictional Note
American courts, particularly in states that abolished fee tail by statute, were more willing than English equity courts to read "all and every other the issue of my body" as creating an absolute class gift rather than a fee tail remainder. Researchers should verify the applicable state's fee tail statute and its date of enactment before relying on English chancery authority for instruments drafted or probated in American jurisdictions.
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