The only difference is that now the manner of making the election is governed by statute, whereas, the question as to what election had been made was, before 1921, a matter of intention to be gathered from the evidence. Mosley v. Body, 198 S.W. 847. (b) Jacob W. Hicks died without filing any renunciation of his wife's will and without any election to take one-half of the real and personal property subject to debts in lieu of common-law dower. Death bars the right of election whether the statutory time has expired or not. Castleman v. Castleman, 184 Mo. 432; Wash v. Wash, 189 Mo. 352; Welch v. Anderson, 28 Mo. 293; Davidson v. Davis, 86 Mo. 440. (2) The will did not create an estate tail. An estate tail is an estate of inheritance, which, instead of descending to heirs generally goes to the heirs of the donee's body, which means his lawful issue, his children, and through him to his grandchildren in a direct line so long as his posterity endures in a regular order and course of descent, and upon the extinction of such issue the estate determines. 21 C.J. 931; Elsea v. Smith, 273 Mo. 396; Fanning v. Doan, 128 Mo. 323. The statute only abolishes estates tail. At common law there was no objection to creating successive life estates