About: Common recovery

A common recovery was a legal proceeding in England that enabled lawyers to convert an entailed estate (a form of land ownership also called a fee tail) into absolute ownership, fee simple. This was accomplished through the use of a series of collusive legal procedures, some parts of which were fictional and others unenforceable (and therefore null). It was devised and perfected by lawyers in the second half of the fifteenth century. A 1472 case, known as Taltarum's Case, increased its popularity.