Definition
"His children forever" is a phrase used in conveyancing and testamentary instruments to describe a class of takers following an initial grantee or devisee. Courts have construed the phrase as equivalent in effect to "heirs" or "heirs of the body," meaning it operates to extend a grant or devise beyond the immediate recipient to that person's lineal descendants. Rather than creating a simple gift to named individuals, the phrase signals an intent to establish a hereditary succession, carrying the property through a line of descent. The practical effect is that the words are read not as a limitation to living children at the time of the instrument, but as language of inheritance reaching forward to all descendants of the body.
Common Confusion
The phrase appears deceptively simple. A reader encountering "his children forever" might assume it names a discrete, identifiable group — the grantor's or devisee's children alive at execution — and that the word "forever" merely confirms a fee simple absolute in those children. Courts have rejected that reading. The phrase is instead treated as language of inheritance equivalent to "heirs of his body," which historically carried the highly technical meaning associated with fee tail estates. The word "children" in this context is thus not a class gift to living offspring but a marker of lineal descent. This divergence from plain meaning is one of the more reliable traps in older deed and will interpretation.
Why It Matters in Research
This phrase is a product of an era when courts strained to honor apparent testamentary intent by mapping vernacular language onto established doctrinal categories. The equivalence to "heirs of his body" is not self-evident from the words themselves — it is judge-made doctrine resolving ambiguity in favor of a recognized estate form.
Researchers working with pre-twentieth-century deeds, wills, and land records should treat this phrase as a signal to examine the fee tail doctrine and its statutory modifications in the relevant jurisdiction. At common law, "heirs of his body" created a fee tail, an estate that passed by descent to lineal heirs and could not be alienated out of the blood line. Most American jurisdictions either abolished the fee tail by statute or converted language of entailment into a fee simple. Whether "his children forever" creates a fee tail, a fee simple in the named children, or some other estate therefore depends heavily on when and where the instrument was executed and what legislation applied.
The Kentucky case cited in Bouvier's — 98 Ky. 291 — provides the doctrinal anchor for the equivalence rule, but it does not resolve every jurisdiction's treatment. Corpus searches for this phrase in older deed abstracts, probate records, and real property opinions should be paired with research into each state's fee tail abolition statute and any savings clauses that converted tail estates into fees simple.
This phrase also illustrates a broader pattern in historical deed construction: courts regularly elevated apparent intent over literal text when literal text would have produced an unrecognized or disfavored estate form. Understanding that interpretive posture is essential to reading the cases correctly.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's is the sole dictionary source for this entry and states the rule concisely: the phrase is equivalent to "heirs or heirs of his body," supported by a single Kentucky authority. Bouvier's does not discuss the underlying fee tail history, the statutory modifications that eroded the practical significance of that equivalence, or any disagreement among jurisdictions. The entry reflects the late nineteenth-century common law posture in which courts actively mapped non-standard phrasing onto recognized estate categories.
What Bouvier's leaves unaddressed is the downstream question: once the equivalence is established, which estate results? At common law, "heirs of his body" created a fee tail after the statute De Donis Conditionalibus (1285). In American jurisdictions that abolished the fee tail, the same language — and by extension "his children forever" — typically created a fee simple absolute in the first taker. Researchers should not assume the Kentucky rule traveled uniformly to other states, nor that courts in states with different fee tail statutes would apply the same construction.
Jurisdictional Note
The equivalence of "his children forever" to "heirs of his body" was established in Kentucky but is not universally codified. States that abolished the fee tail by statute often provide that language which would have created a tail at common law instead vests a fee simple in the first taker. The practical result of applying this phrase therefore varies depending on whether the jurisdiction had a fee tail, when it was abolished, and whether the abolition statute expressly addressed equivalent language.