>To the best of my knowledge it remains a trust usually set up by a >will. So each will needs careful examination to see what the terms >actually were. a male entail is to the eldest son or next in male line of descent - and the current owner only holds a life rent on the property, and cannot vary the inheritance by next male heir unless the next male joins with him in barring the entail. A father and son might do this, a more distant heir is unlikely to do so. Some wills express a series of remainders, rather than an entail, even if they have a similar effect, by naming the next male to succeed if the son/s of the testator fail. This is not the same thing, because the testator owns the property he is disposing of, and just selects a series of potential heirs. This, thinking about it, is the only way a Collins could inherit, if a male heir was preferred over any female heirs. I am sure that his position as heir is referred to as by entail (which would be wrong) > Certainly earlier wills that I have seen were quite clear on >(a) the main line of beneficiaries and (b) what to do when or if that >main line failed. That's a remainder not an entail, as you point out. >If others cared to call this an entail, then so be it, >but the terms were those in the will. >a few years ago that an ancestress of mine had left something (a wedding >veil) on a "female-entail", to be owned in turn by the eldest daughter >of the eldest daughter and was clearly specified in her will. I like that - and the fact that it worked, with the veil surviving. (What happened if the heiress was a little girl who would have used it for dressing up, or caught it on nails etc?) -- Eve McLaughlin Author of the McLaughlin Guides for family historians Secretary Bucks Genealogical Society