Definition
Adjective. Property or interests described as entailed are settled, limited, or restricted so that they can only pass to a specified line of heirs — typically the heirs of the body of the original grantee — and cannot be freely alienated, devised, or conveyed outside that line. The term derives from the noun fee tail (or freehold in tail) and functions as its adjectival form: entailed property is property held under such a limitation.
An entailed estate differs from a fee simple in the most fundamental way possible: the holder cannot cut off the future rights of heirs in the designated succession. The inheritance descends by operation of the entail rather than by the holder's will or deed. When the designated line fails entirely, the property reverts to the original grantor or the grantor's heirs by way of reversion.
Two subsidiary uses appear in historical legal writing:
1. Entailed money: Personal property — typically a sum of money or a fund — directed by will or settlement to be laid out in the purchase of land and then held as if it were an entailed estate in realty, thereby bringing personalty within the same succession restrictions that governed the land.
2. Entailed gift or bequest: A testamentary or inter vivos transfer structured to replicate the limitations of a fee tail, often requiring statutory authority or specific conveyancing language to be effective.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Having or resulting from a legal entail; pertaining to inheritance limited in descent to a particular class of issue." Also used in general logic to mean something that is required or implied as a necessary consequence.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To entail meant to cut down or limit; entailed carried the sense of being cut, shaped, or restricted — reflecting the Norman-French origin of the concept.
The gap matters here: in everyday modern English, "entailed" almost always means "implied" or "involved" — as in "the job entailed long hours." In legal historical sources, entailed means something far more specific: property locked into a mandatory succession that the holder cannot break. A researcher encountering "entailed" in a deed, settlement, or will should not assume the common logical meaning; context will almost always confirm the property-law sense, but the risk of misreading is real, especially in narrative legal history where both uses may appear in close proximity.
Common Confusion
Entailed is frequently confused with settled. Both describe property subject to restrictions on alienation and succession, but they are not synonymous. Settled property is the broader category, encompassing trusts and other instruments that restrict ownership and management. Entailed property is a specific type of settled property in which the restriction takes the particular form of a fee tail — succession limited to bodily heirs of a specified line. All entailed property is settled, but not all settled property is entailed. Researchers working with English estate records prior to 1926 must keep this distinction sharp.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Entailed interests tracked the recognized forms of the fee tail itself:
- Entailed in fee tail general: limited to heirs of the body without restriction as to which spouse.
- Entailed in fee tail special: limited to heirs of the body of a named couple, excluding heirs by any other partner.
- Entailed in tail male / tail female: further restricting descent to male-line or female-line heirs respectively.
- Entailed money: personalty directed to be converted and held subject to the same succession restrictions as an entailed estate in land.
Why It Matters in Research
Pattern: Historical evolution with deep property-law cross-referencing.
The practical significance of entailed depends almost entirely on jurisdiction and date. In England, the fee tail — and thus entailed property — was abolished as a new creation by the Law of Property Act 1925. From 1926 onward, purported entails in England take effect as equitable interests only, and the word entailed in post-1925 English sources signals a historical or transitional context, not a live estate form. Researchers must therefore date every document before interpreting an entail reference.
In the American colonies and early states, fee tail was generally received as part of the common law but was rapidly abolished or converted by statute. Most American states had abolished or allowed disentailment by the mid-nineteenth century, and many converted existing fee tails into fee simples by legislation. A deed from a Virginia estate in 1750 describing property as entailed carries different weight than the same word in an 1850 Massachusetts document — one describes a live and legally enforceable restriction; the other likely describes a historical curiosity already superseded.
The entailed money doctrine requires particular care. Black's 2nd Edition references the Statute 3 & 4 William IV (the Fines and Recoveries Act 1833), which rationalized the law of entails including the treatment of money directed to be laid out in land. Researchers tracing a trust or settlement involving personalty earmarked for land purchase should be alert to this doctrine, which can pull what looks like a simple money bequest into the succession rules governing real property.
Finally, the mechanism for breaking an entail — disentailment — is a closely related research thread. Historically, disentailment required a common recovery (a procedural fiction) or, after 1833 in England, a formal deed enrolled in Chancery. The presence of an entail in chain of title almost always raises the question of whether and how it was barred, which will send a researcher into a separate but parallel body of records.
Historical Dictionary Support
Both editions of Black's define entailed identically in substance: "settled or limited to specified heirs, or in tail." The 2nd Edition adds the subsidiary doctrine of entailed money and gestures toward statutory authority (Wm. IV), which is useful for dating the legal framework. Neither edition provides the full historical arc — the origin in De Donis Conditionalibus (1285), the centuries of avoidance through common recoveries, or the eventual statutory abolition — and neither flags the American divergence. Researchers relying solely on Black's will have a correct but incomplete picture. Historical sources are silent on the 1925 English abolition entirely, as both editions predate it.
Jurisdictional Note
England abolished the fee tail as a new estate form in 1925; entailed interests after that date exist only in equity and within the overreaching machinery of the Settled Land Act. In the United States, nearly all jurisdictions abolished or converted fee tail by statute, with timing varying from colonial-era acts (Massachusetts, 1791) to the nineteenth century. A handful of American states retained modified forms longer. Researchers should identify the specific jurisdiction and consult that jurisdiction's reception and abolition statutes before drawing conclusions from any entail reference.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Fee Tail; Settled Estates; Disentailment; Law of Property Act 1925.