Section III. Property Rights of Married Women

The fact that a woman marries does not of itself take away or lessen her natural capacity to possess property. Her husband is indeed the head of the family, and is presumed to be better able to administer family affairs than his wife. Moreover, the law of England used to give the husband very extensive rights over his wife’s property. For in general any freehold estate of which the wife was seized at the time of the marriage, or of which she became seized afterwards, became vested in her husband and herself during the coverture, and the husband was entitled to the profits, and had the sole control and management. By marriage a husband became possessed of his wife’s leaseholds in her right. He was not only entitled to the profits and management of them during the joint lives, but he could dispose of them as he pleased by any act during the coverture. The personal chattels of the wife became in general the absolute property of the husband.¹

By degrees inroads were made on the rigour of the common law, and means were found to secure separate property to a married woman. By the Married Women’s Property Acts of 1870 and 1882 great changes were introduced, so that now a woman married after the first day of January, 1883, possesses as her separate estate all her property, whether acquired before or after the marriage. All women who were married before the above date similarly possess as their separate estate all property which comes to them after that date. Practically, therefore, during her life and that of her husband a married woman has rights of property as if she were single.

Furthermore, she has a right to support for herself and her children, even those of a previous marriage, at her husband’s expense, according to her condition in life, and she may effect an insurance on her own or on her husband’s life for her separate use.

¹ Stephen’s Commentaries, 2, p. 277.

A married woman can now make a will and leave her separate property according to law to whom she pleases. In conscience she must of course take account of the needs of her surviving relatives and of other legitimate claims on her remembrance. If she dies intestate, all her personalty goes to her husband; her realty also goes to him for life, afterwards to the only child, or to the eldest son or his issue if he be dead, or to the daughters equally.