Married Women's Property Act 1882

English law defined the role of the wife as a feme covert, emphasizing her subordination to her husband, and putting her under the "protection and influence of her husband, her baron, or lord".[4] Upon marriage, the husband and wife became one person under the law, as the property of the wife was surrendered to her husband, and her legal identity ceased to exist. Any personal property acquired by the wife during the marriage, unless specified that it was for her own separate use, went automatically to her husband. If a woman writer had copyright before marriage, the copyright would pass to the husband afterwards, for instance. Further, a married woman was unable to draft a will or dispose of any property without her husband's consent.[5]

Women were often limited in what they could inherit. Males were more likely to receive real property (land), while females with brothers were sometimes limited to inherited personal property, which included clothing, jewellery, household furniture, food, and all moveable goods.[6] In an instance where no will was found, the English law of primogeniture automatically gave the oldest son the right to all real property, and the daughter only inherited real property in the absence of a male heir. The law of intestate primogeniture remained on the statute books in Britain until the 1925 property legislation simplified and updated England's archaic law of real property.[6]

Aware of their daughters' unfortunate situation, fathers often provided them with dowries or worked into a prenuptial agreement pin money, the estate which the wife was to possess for her sole and separate use not subject to the control of her husband, to provide her with an income separate from his.[7]

In contrast to wives, women who never married or who were widowed maintained control over their property and inheritance, owned land and controlled property disposal, since by law any unmarried adult female was considered to be a feme sole. Once married, the only way that women could reclaim property was through widowhood.

The dissolution of a marriage, whether initiated by the husband or wife, usually left the divorced females impoverished, as the law offered them no rights to marital property. The 1836 Caroline Norton court case highlighted the injustice of English property laws, and generated enough support that eventually resulted in the Married Women's Property Act.[6]

After years of political lobbying, the Married Women's Property Act addressed the grievances presented by English women. The Act altered the common law doctrine of coverture to include the wife's right to own, buy and sell her separate property.[8] Wives' legal identities were also restored, as the courts were forced to recognize a husband and a wife as two separate legal entities, in the same manner as if the wife was a feme sole. Married women's legal rights included the right 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 then also liable for their own debts, and any outside trade they owned was subject to bankruptcy laws. Further, married women were able to hold stock in their own names.[9]

As of 2016, most of the Act has been repealed.[10] The remaining sections are 6, 10, 11 and 17. Of these, one of the more important was s. 11, which provided that a widow could in her own right enforce her late husband's life assurance policy. (Also, the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999 enables both men and women to enforce contracts drawn up by others for their benefit.)

• Coverture
• Married Women's Property Act 1870
• Married Women's Property Acts in the United States
• Primogeniture

• Amy Louise Erickson, Women and Property in Early Modern England (London: Routledge, 1993).
• Dorothy Stetson, A Woman's Issue: The Politics of Family Law 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 Property Acts, The Historical Journal, Vol. 46, No. 1 (Mar., 2003), pp. 59–87.

• Text of the Married Women's Property Act 1882 as in force today (including any amendments) within the United Kingdom, from legislation.gov.uk.