Family interests and settlements at common law

Abstract

The cases in this chapter relate to property provisions for widows (dower), widowers (curtesy), younger sons, and daughters. A group of reports throws light on the difficulties in interpreting conditional gifts restricted to descendants, culminating in the Statute De Donis (1285) and its outcome, the statutory fee tail. Later reports show the perplexity occasioned over the legal nature of the fee tail and its durability. There are also discussions of the common recovery as a method of barring the entail, of the concept of the remainder, and of doubts about the validity of contingent remainders.