noun
( plural fees tail )
Etymology: Middle English fee taille, from Anglo-French fé taillé, from Old French fé fee, fief + taillé, taillié, past part of taillier to cut, decide, determine — more at fee , tail II (entailed)
: an estate in fee granted to a person and his issue or a designated class of his issue that is subject to the possibility of reversion if there is no such issue or no alternative gift to a designated person in case there is no such issue, that is subject under modern statutes to being converted into a fee simple absolute by the owner's barring the entail by executing a deed in his lifetime or to being converted to other types of estates more in harmony with present social conditions, and that is the estate created by the English Statute De Donis of 1285 or a similar statute operating upon a grant that would otherwise create a fee simple conditional — compare reversion