Heirs of the body or bodily heirs are restrictive terms as compared with "heirs" and are strictly construed to include only lineal descendants--children actually begotten and born of the parents in question. The inclusion of bodily heirs or heirs of the body following the name of the grantee used to be the most expeditious manner with which to create a fee tail, an estate in which the inheritance is limited to the grantee's or donee's direct or lineal heirs. In most states, fee tails no longer exist, having been prohibited by statute or case law. The Rule in Shelley's Case has followed a similar fate. Both statutory and case law must be fully researched in order to determine the title implications of the term within any particular jurisdiction.

A deed or devise to a person and the heirs of the body, heirs, children, or issue, may give rise to very intricate and complex title problems.

Determine each of the following questions according to the laws of your own particular jurisdiction:

• Whether fee tails have been abolished. Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island (as to deeds only) have estates in fee tail, but they are obsolescent survivals and infrequently encountered.
  
  
• Whether the Rule in Shelley's Case has become inapplicable. Under this rule, when the ancestor, by any gift or conveyance, takes an estate of freehold, and in the same gift or conveyance an estate is limited, either then or in the future, to his heirs in fee or in tail, the "heirs" are words of limitation of the estate, not words of purchase. Most states have abolished the Rule in Shelley's Case.
  
  
• Whether the meaning and extent of heirs of the body has been fully construed by statute or case law.
  
  
• Whether heirs of the body implies words of purchase or words of limitation like at common law.
  
  
• Whether children and issue have the same legal significance