At common law, fee tail or entail is a restriction on the sale or inheritance of an estate in real property which prevents the property from being sold, devised by will, or otherwise alienated, and instead causes it to pass automatically by operation of law to the property owner's heirs at law upon his or her death. The term fee tail is from Medieval Latin feodum talliatum, which means "cut-short fee".The fee tail has been abolished in many jurisdictions. Its purpose was to keep family estates intact in the main line of succession. It also had the effect of disabling illegitimate children from inheriting. But it created complications for many propertied families, especially from about the late 17th to the early 19th century, leaving many individuals wealthy in land but heavily in debt, unable to sell any part of their land or even to offer the property as security for a loan. The nominal "owner" of the property in fact had the equivalent only of a life interest in it, with the remainder passing intact to the next successor or heir in law; any purported bequest of the land was ineffective.