Several Jane Austen novels are based on the concept of entails, where an estate could only be inherited by a male heir, and daughters were left with nothing (making it necessary for them to find husbands, thus triggering the entire plot of a Jane Austen novel). In at least some of the cases (Pride & Prejudice, Sense & Sensibility) the fathers of the family couldn't do anything to change the entails. Even though they were the boss of the estate, their hands were completely tied by the legalities of the entail, and they had no way of seeing to it that their daughters were provided for.
So what I'm wondering is, how did it come about that entails no longer exist? If they're so wrapped up legalities that the people in charge of the estates did not have the power to change them, how did they get changed?
2 comments:
Entails were banned in England in 1925 by the Law of Property Act and banned in Scotland by the Abolition of Feudal Tenure etc. (Scotland) Act 2000. Most US states have never recognized fee entail. I'm not sure about Canada; the 1925 Act might even apply in Canada.
So when they banned them, what happened to entails that existed that the time?
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