Morals of the Church
Library › Prümmer, Manuale Theologiae Moralis › Volume II › Treatise XI. On The Virtue Of Justice And The Opposed Vices › Section I. On Right And On The Virtue Of Justice Itself › Question I. On Right Itself › Chapter III. On The Subject Of Right Or Dominion › Article I. On The Dominion Of Spouses › On The Dominion Of Spouses According To The Civil Codes Of Certain Nations

Section — Prümmer, Manuale Theologiae Moralis

§ 3. On The Dominion Of Spouses According To English Law

20.

20. 1. Just as French law and German law, so also English law recognizes two regimes of goods, namely legal and conventional.

  1. The legal system now in force must be taken from the Married Women's Property Act, 1882, which law indeed is in force from the day 1 Jan. 1883.

  2. During marriage the husband retains scarcely any right in the wife's goods, and therefore all the wife's goods are paraphernal in the most perfect sense, so that the wife can freely dispose of all her own goods.

  3. During marriage the wife has a right to the suitable support of herself and her children from the husband's goods. If nevertheless the husband himself is constituted in necessity, the wife is held to support him insofar as it is possible.

  4. When the husband has died, the wife has a right, during her own life, to the third part "of all the lands and tenements of which her husband was seized or possessed in fee simple or fee tail at any time during the coverture, and of which any issue that she might have had could have been heir."

  5. A conventional system of goods can be entered most freely, both before and after marriage, between spouses according to their own wishes.42

42 Cf. Slater, Princ. theol. mor., de iust. c. 7, § 3.

Property Rights of Married WomenA married woman's property