Late Nineteenth Century Married Women's Property Law: Reception of the Early Married Women's Property Acts by Courts and Legislatures

Abstract

The reform of married women's property has been proceeding for more than a century.' Beginning around 1835, states began to alter the common law rules granting husbands management and control of their wives' real estate and ownership of their personal property. The initial wave of acts generally provided that married women's property was to be exempted from attachment by creditors of their husbands. Some of these acts also contained language permitting married women to own property in their own separate estates, although the statutory language gave almost no guidance as to the scope of management authority, if any, wives were to have over their assets. Frequently the statutes were construed narrowly. Subsequent legislation was necessary in all jurisdictions before the major tenets of common law coverture rules had been altered.2 That married women's property reform came in a slow piecemeal fashion suggests that those men dealing with the issue in legislatures and courts must have differed among themselves in their attitudes toward the changes being wrought. Such cultural ambiva-