A base fee is an interest in real property that has the potential to last forever, provided a specified contingent event does not take place.
In law, a base fee is a freehold estate of inheritance which is limited or qualified by the existence of certain conditions.
In modern property law the commonest example of a base fee is an estate created by a tenant in tail, not in possession, who bars the entail without the consent of the protector of the settlement.
[citation needed] Though he bars his own issue (the rights of the future tenants in tail), he cannot bar any remainder or reversion, and the estate (i.e. the base fee) thus created is determinable on the failure of his issue in tail.
An example of this kind of estate was introduced by George Eliot into the plot of Felix Holt, the Radical (1866),[1] and also by Cyril Hare in He Should Have Died Hereafter (1957).