Tile  Florida  act  ("no  estate  shall  be  entailed")  simply  makes  the  words  "heirs
of  the  body"  equivalent  to  the  single  word  "Iieirs."

(117)


§    18  LAND   TITLES   IN   THE    UNITED   STATES,  [Ch.  3

sion  to  the  right  heirs  of  the  donor.**  This  course  is  the  simplest,
and  would  have  been  the  best,  but  it  defeats  the  intention  of  the
grantor  or  testator  so  plainly  that  some  of  the  courts,  in  their  desire
to  save  this  intent,  have  taken  hold  of  the  slightest  deviation  from
the  technical  words  "to  J.  S.  and  the  heirs  of  his  body,"  to  turn  the
entail  into  a  strict  settlement.  Thus,  in  Kentucky,  an  estate  limited
in  a  will  to  a  woman  and  her  bodily  heirs  has  been  construed  into
an  estate  for  life  in  the  first  taker,  with  a  vested  remainder  in  her
children;  and  decisions  going  nearly  as  far  have  been  made  in  some
of  the  other  states  which  have  legislated  in  this  manner.  Thus  the
result  has  been  to  substitute  for  an  estate  which  at  a  moderate  cost
could  have  been  made  absolute  and  salable,  in  some  cases  at  least,
an  estate  inexorably  tied  up  for  one  generation.**

Tliese  evil  results  here  are  rare  and  incidental.  A  worse  course
has  been  taken  in  Connecticut  and  in  New  Jersey,  Ohio,  and  New
Mexico,  in  Vermont,  Illinois,  Missouri,  and  Arkansas.  In  all  these
states  a  fee  simple  is  declared,  not  in  favor  of  the  first  tenant  in  tail,
but  of  those  coming  after  him.  In  the  first  four  named  states  it  is
in  favor  of  "the  issue  of  the  first  donee,"  in  the  other  four  states  in
favor  of  those  who  would  next  after  him  take  the  estate  *T)y  the  course
of  the  common  law,"  which  would  include  remainder-men  and  rever-
sioners as  well  as  issue  in  tail.  In  all  these  states,  except  in  Connec-
ts See,  as  to  old  law  in  North  Can^lina,  Doe  v.  .Taoocks.  4  Hawks,  310;  In-
diana, same  sections  as  above;  New  York,  Rev.  St.  pt.  2,  c.  1,  tit  2,  §  4:
Michigan,  2  How.  Ann.  St.  §  5520;  California,  Civ.  Code,  §  7()4;  Dakota,  Civ.
