what happened to an english womans property when she married
 Parliament of the United Kingdom | |
| Long title | An human activity to consolidate and ameliorate the police relating to the property of married women. |
|---|---|
| Citation | 45 & 46 Vict. c.75 |
| Territorial extent | England and Wales[1] |
| Dates | |
| Royal assent | 18 August 1882 |
| Commencement | 1 January 1883[2] |
| Other legislation | |
| Amended past |
|
| Relates to | Married Women's Property (Scotland) Human activity 1881 |
| Condition: Amended | |
| Text of statute as originally enacted | |
| Text of the Married Women'south Property Act 1882 equally in force today (including any amendments) inside the United Kingdom, from legislation.gov.united kingdom of great britain and northern ireland. | |
The Married Women's Holding Act 1882 (45 & 46 Vict. c.75) was an Act of the Parliament of the U.k. that significantly altered English law regarding the holding rights of married women, which besides other matters allowed married women to own and control property in their own right.
The Deed applied in England (and Wales) and Ireland, merely did not extend to Scotland.[3] The Married Women'south Property Human activity was a model for similar legislation in other British territories. For instance, Victoria passed legislation in 1884, New Due south Wales in 1889, and the remaining Australian colonies passed like legislation between 1890 and 1897.[ citation needed ]
English women's belongings rights [edit]
English common constabulary defined the part of the wife equally a feme covert, emphasising her subordination to her husband, and putting her under the "protection and influence of her husband, her baron, or lord".[iv] Upon wedlock, the husband and wife became ane person under the police, as the belongings of the wife was surrendered to her husband, and her status as a carve up legal personality, with the ability to ain belongings, and sue and exist sued solely in her own name, ceased to exist. Any personal property caused by the wife during the marriage, unless specified that it was for her own separate apply, went automatically to her married man. If a adult female writer had copyright earlier wedlock, the copyright would laissez passer to the hubby afterwards, for instance. Further, a wife was unable to draft a volition or dispose of whatsoever property without her husband's consent.[5]
Women were limited in what they could inherit. Males were more probable to receive real belongings (land), while females with brothers were sometimes limited to inherited personal property, which included clothing, jewellery, household piece of furniture, nutrient, and all moveable appurtenances.[6] In an case where no will was found, the English constabulary of primogeniture automatically gave the oldest son the correct to all real property, and the girl just inherited existent belongings in the absenteeism of a male heir. The law of intestate primogeniture remained on the statute books in United kingdom until the 1925 property legislation simplified and updated England'south archaic law of existent belongings.[half dozen]
Aware of their daughters' unfortunate situation, fathers frequently provided them with dowries or worked into a prenuptial agreement pivot coin, the estate which the married woman was to possess for her sole and split up utilize not subject to the control of her husband, to provide her with an income separate from his.[7] This could be done past conveying belongings to 'feoffees-to-use', or trustees, who would legally hold the property 'to her use', and for which she would be the equitable and benign owner. The wife would and so receive the benefits of the property through her control of the trustees and her right in the constabulary of equity as the beneficial owner.
In dissimilarity to wives, women who never married or who were widowed maintained control over their property and inheritance, endemic land and controlled holding disposal, since past law any unmarried developed female person was a femme sole. Once married, the simply way that women could reclaim property was through widowhood. The few exceptions of married women who were femmes sole were queens of England, and Margaret Beaufort, who was declared to be a femme sole by a 1485 deed of parliament passed by her son, in spite of the fact Beaufort was nonetheless married to Thomas Stanley, Earl of Derby.
The dissolution of a union, whether initiated by the husband or wife, usually left the divorced females impoverished, equally the constabulary offered them no rights to marital property. The 1836 Caroline Norton court case highlighted the injustice of English property laws, and generated enough support to issue in the Married Women's Property Act.[6]
The Human activity [edit]
Subsequently years of political lobbying, the Married Women's Property Act addressed the grievances presented by English women. The Human activity altered the mutual law doctrine of coverture to include the wife's correct to ain, buy and sell her separate holding.[8] Wives' legal identities were also restored, as the courts were forced to recognize a hubby and a wife as two divide legal entities, in the same manner as if the wife was a feme sole. Married women'south legal rights included the correct to sue and be sued. Any damages a wife might pay would be her own responsibility, instead of that of her husband. Married women were so also liable for their own debts, and any outside trade they owned was field of study to bankruptcy laws. Further, married women were able to hold stock in their own names.[nine] Elizabeth Cady Stanton credited Ursula Brilliant with the accomplishment in getting the bill passed, writing 'for x consecutive years she gave her special attention to this beak … was unwearied in her efforts, in rolling up petitions, scattering tracts, belongings meetings'[10]
As of 2016, most of the Act has been repealed.[eleven] The remaining sections are 6, 10, xi and 17. Of these, one of the more important was due south. eleven, which provided that a widow could in her own right enforce her late husband'due south life balls policy. (Also, the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Deed 1999 enables both men and women to enforce contracts drawn upwards by others for their benefit.)
Run into also [edit]
- Coverture
- Married Women's Property Human action 1870
- Married Women'southward Property Acts in the Us
- Primogeniture
Farther reading [edit]
- Amy Louise Erickson, Women and Holding in Early Modern England (London: Routledge, 1993).
- Dorothy Stetson, A Woman's Result: The Politics of Family Constabulary Reform in England (London: Greenwood, 1982).
- Mary Lyndon Shanley, Feminism, Marriage, and Law in Victorian England, 1850-1895 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989).
- Ben Griffin, Class, Gender, and Liberalism in Parliament, 1868-1882: The Case of the Married Women's Holding Acts, The Historical Journal, Vol. 46, No. ane (Mar., 2003), pp. 59–87.
References [edit]
- ^ south.26
- ^ s.25
- ^ south. 26 of the Act
- ^ Blackstone, William (1769). "Of husband and married woman". Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765–1769). Lonang Institute.
- ^ Bridget Hill, Women, Work and Sexual Politics in Eighteenth-century England (London: Blackwell, 1989), 1988.
- ^ a b c Hiam Brinjikji, "Belongings Rights of Women in Nineteenth-Century England". [ permanent dead link ]
- ^ Anne Laurence, Women in England, 1500–1760: A Social History (New York: St. Martin's, 1994).
- ^ OPSI, Married Women'due south Belongings Act 1882
- ^ Trevor May, An Economic and Social History of Britain(New York: Longman, 1987), 90.
- ^ Stanton, Elizabeth Cady; Anthony, Susan B.; Gage, Matilda Joslyn; Harper, Ida Husted (1886). History of Adult female Suffrage: 1876-1885. Fowler & Wells.
- ^ "Married Women'southward Property Human activity 1882".
External links [edit]
- Text of the Married Women's Belongings Act 1882 as in force today (including any amendments) inside the United Kingdom, from legislation.gov.uk.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Married_Women%27s_Property_Act_1882
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