Definition
Words of procreation are the specific words used in a deed or conveyance that limit an estate to the grantee's lineal descendants — that is, words that restrict inheritance to the body-born heirs of the original recipient rather than allowing the property to pass to collateral heirs or be freely alienated. The classic formulation is "to A. and the heirs of his body," where the phrase "heirs of his body" constitutes the words of procreation. Without such language, a grant "to A. and his heirs" creates a fee simple; with it, the grant historically created a fee tail, confining the estate to A.'s direct bloodline.
The term is a term of art in property law. "Words of procreation" does not describe the words standing alone but describes their legal function: they signal that the grantor intends to tie the land to a line of descent rather than to confer an absolute, alienable estate.
Common Confusion
Words of procreation are easily confused with words of limitation and words of purchase, and researchers working in historical sources must keep all three distinct.
— Words of purchase identify who takes the estate (the grantee).
— Words of limitation define the extent or quality of the estate taken.
— Words of procreation are a subset of words of limitation — specifically those words that impose the body-born-heirs restriction necessary to create a fee tail.
A grant "to A." contains only words of purchase. A grant "to A. and his heirs" adds words of limitation creating a fee simple. A grant "to A. and the heirs of his body" adds words of procreation — a particular kind of words of limitation — that historically created a fee tail. The categories overlap, and Black's and older treatises sometimes use "words of limitation" loosely to cover both the fee simple and the fee tail formulas. Researchers should not assume equivalence.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is almost entirely a creature of historical property law and will appear in primary sources — deeds, wills, conveyances, and equity cases — from the medieval period through the nineteenth century. Its research significance is almost inverse to its current practical importance: the fee tail has been abolished or converted by statute in virtually every American jurisdiction, meaning the phrase "words of procreation" appears rarely in modern cases but frequently in historical documents and the secondary literature interpreting them.
Key traps for researchers:
1. Period-specific meaning. In sources predating the Statute De Donis Conditionalibus (1285), the conditional fee — the precursor to the fee tail — was less rigidly defined. The necessity of words of procreation as a formal requirement became entrenched after De Donis and was elaborated by courts over the following centuries. Sources from different periods may describe the requirement differently.
2. American variation in fee tail treatment. American jurisdictions diverged dramatically in how they handled the fee tail after independence. Some states converted a fee tail to a fee simple by statute; others allowed the fee tail to stand but permitted disentailment; a few retained something close to the common law rule for a period. A deed in an early American case that contains words of procreation may or may not have actually created a fee tail depending on when and where it was executed. Corpus researchers tracing title disputes must check the operative statute for the relevant jurisdiction and date.
3. Drafting failures. A recurring issue in historical cases is whether words used in a deed were sufficient to constitute words of procreation. Courts debated whether variations from the standard formula — "heirs of his body," "issue of his body," "lawfully begotten heirs," and similar phrases — were equivalent. These disputes generated substantial case law. If you are researching a historical title question or the construction of an old deed, the sufficiency of the language is itself a live question.
4. Wills vs. deeds. The same logic applied in testamentary instruments, though courts sometimes treated the requirement with slightly more flexibility in wills than in deeds given the different rules of construction applicable to each.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary states the rule concisely: to create a fee tail by deed, words of procreation must be used "in order to confine the estate to the descendants of the first grantee, as in the usual form of limitation — 'to A. and the heirs of his body,'" citing Sweet's Law Dictionary. This captures the operative rule accurately for the classic common law period.
What Black's does not convey — and what researchers relying solely on the dictionary entry will miss — is the procedural and historical texture surrounding the requirement. The rule hardened following De Donis, was systematically addressed in Coke on Littleton, and was the subject of recurring litigation over whether non-standard language could substitute for the canonical formula. Black's entry gives the rule's conclusion, not its history or its contested edges. For treatise-level depth, Coke on Littleton and later works by Kent and Blackstone remain the essential reference points for understanding how courts applied and debated the sufficiency of particular words.
No other historical legal dictionaries represented in the Law Mind corpus provide a materially different formulation, though some present the rule in the context of the fee tail more broadly rather than isolating the phrase "words of procreation" as a distinct term.
Jurisdictional Note
The fee tail — and therefore the operative significance of words of procreation — has been abolished or severely limited in all American jurisdictions, with most states converting a fee tail to a fee simple absolute by statute. The term retains relevance in historical title research, in interpreting pre-abolition instruments, and in jurisdictions (notably Maine) that retained modified forms of the fee tail longer than others. English law retained the fee tail until the Trusts of Land and Appointment of Trustees Act 1996 effectively extinguished it for new instruments.