Definition
The Statute De Donis Conditionalibus (13 Edw. I, c. 1, 1285), commonly shortened to "De Donis," was an English parliamentary statute that fixed the law of conditional fees and gave rise to the fee tail as a distinct estate in land. The statute belongs to the reign of Edward I and forms part of the legislative cluster known as the Second Statute of Westminster.
Before De Donis, a gift of land "to a man and the heirs of his body" was interpreted by the courts as creating only a conditional fee: once the donee had a child and thus satisfied the condition, the fee became absolute, and the donee could alienate the land and cut out both the heirs of the body and the possibility of reversion to the donor. De Donis changed this result by commanding that the will of the donor as expressed in the original gift be observed. After the statute, the donee could not alienate the land to defeat the claims of lineal heirs or the reversionary interest of the donor's family. The estate that resulted — inheritable only through the bloodline specified in the original grant — became what later lawyers called the fee tail (or fee simple conditional, in jurisdictions that never fully adopted the fee tail).
---
Common Confusion
De Donis is occasionally confused with the broader category of statutes of limitations or statutes of repose simply because researchers encounter it in shorthand form as a "statute" without further identification. It has no connection to limitations periods. It is also sometimes conflated with Quia Emptores (18 Edw. I, 1290), the companion Edwardian statute that addressed free alienation of land held in fee simple. The two statutes pull in opposite directions: De Donis restricted alienation of entailed land; Quia Emptores freed alienation of fee simple land by substituting the transferee for the transferor in the feudal chain.
---
Why It Matters in Research
De Donis is a foundational reference point in any research touching the history of real property, inheritance, and the law of estates. Its significance for Law Mind corpus researchers includes:
1. The fee tail lineage. The statute is the direct source of the fee tail estate. Primary and secondary sources discussing fee tails, entails, tenant in tail, or disentailment statutes all trace their analysis to De Donis. Researchers who encounter "fee simple conditional" in American sources — particularly in South Carolina, which historically resisted full adoption of the fee tail — should understand that this terminology reflects a pre-De Donis or non-De Donis construction, not a distinct statutory creation.
2. The common recovery workaround. Within roughly a century of De Donis, courts of common law developed the common recovery as a collusive proceeding to bar the entail, effectively nullifying the statute in practice. Sources spanning the 15th through 18th centuries that discuss common recoveries or fines to bar entails are addressing the erosion of De Donis, not a separate body of law.
3. American abolition. Most American states abolished the fee tail by statute after independence, either converting entails into fee simples or prohibiting their creation. Researchers working in post-revolutionary American land records, deed books, or probate materials will encounter the vocabulary of De Donis (heirs of the body, remainder over, reversion to the donor) embedded in conveyancing language even where the fee tail itself had been abolished. Understanding De Donis is necessary to decode that language correctly.
4. Statute citation form. Historical sources cite this statute variously as "De Donis," "Stat. De Donis Conditionalibus," "13 Edw. I, c. 1," or as part of "Westminster II." All refer to the same enactment. Rapalje & Lawrence's citation to "13 Ed. I. c. 1, A.D. 1226" contains an error in the year — the correct date is 1285, not 1226 — a trap for researchers who copy citations uncritically from secondary compilations.
---
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary identifies the statute as "1 Edw." in the fragment preserved in the source material, which appears to be a transcription or truncation error; the statute is universally placed in the reign of Edward I but at 13 Edw. I (1285). Rapalje & Lawrence provide slightly more context, correctly identifying the statute as 13 Ed. I, c. 1 and situating it within Westminster the Second, though their date of "A.D. 1226" is incorrect (1226 was the reign of Henry III, not Edward I). Both dictionaries are sparse in their treatment, reflecting the assumption that their readers would encounter De Donis primarily through Coke's commentary on Littleton and through Blackstone's Commentaries, where the statute receives extensive treatment.
What the historical dictionaries miss: neither source explains the interpretive transformation that De Donis accomplished — the shift from conditional fee to fee tail — nor do they flag the rapid judicial circumvention of the statute through common recoveries. A researcher relying solely on these dictionary entries would not understand why the statute matters or how quickly it was defanged in practice.
---
Jurisdictional Note
De Donis was an English statute and has no direct force in any American jurisdiction, but its effects are felt wherever colonial-era land grants used fee tail language. Most states abolished fee tails by the early 19th century; a handful of states (including Maine, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island) converted entails by statute into fee simples. South Carolina recognized a "fee simple conditional" distinct from the fee tail. Researchers working with land records from any former English colony should treat De Donis as essential background, not irrelevant foreign law.
---
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Civil Procedure & Evidence Encyclopedia: Statutes of Repose vs. Statutes of Limitation (civpro_133) — relevant for distinguishing De Donis from limitations statutes when encountered in historical source material.
---