Married Women's Property Act

“ Men of property stood for the Married Women's Property Act, because they perceived plainly that their own wealth, devised to daughters who could not control it, might easily be gambled away, or wasted through improvidence, or diverted to the use of strangers. ”

“ My father was the first man in the State Senate to propose the repeal of some of our oppressive laws, and succeeded in having the law giving all real estate to the eldest male heir repealed. The law of 1871 gave a married woman the right to make a will, provided her husband gave his written consent, with the names of two respectable witnesses thereunto attached. In 1873 the law was repealed, and another act passed giving married women the right to make a will, buy property and hold it exempt from the husband's debts, but this law does not affect his tenancy by courtesy. ”

“ The most unjust discriminations against women in the property laws were removed by the Constitutional Convention of 1868. Since then a married woman may acquire and hold real estate and have the enjoyment of its income and profits in her own separate right, and she may dispose of it by will subject to the husband's curtesy (the life use of the whole) ; but she can not sell any of it without his consent. The husband can not sell his real estate so as to cut off the dower of the wife (the life use of one-third) without her consent. ”

“ If she has earned money during marriage, he may collect it. In regard to realty (real estate) he controls the income, and without her consent he can not encumber, or dispose of the property beyond his own life." Women, married or single, have no political rights whatever. While single, their legal rights are the same as [Pg 108] those of men; when married, their legal rights are chiefly suspended. "The condition of the wife may be inferred from what has already been said. She is almost at the mercy of her husband; she can exercise no control over his property or her own. ”

“ In 1892, '93, '95 and '98 the laws were improved in regard to married women's property rights, allowing them to hold real estate independently of their husbands, restraining husbands from collecting debts or wages owing to their wives, and making the wife's signature necessary to the legality of mortgage. ”

“ Nowhere in the United States is the married woman, in the eyes of the law, civilly dead. Nowhere is she bereft of the right in property and wages. In that year 1848 when the "Declaration of Sentiments" was drafted, New York State, still withholding the franchise from woman, expressly permitted married women to hold property for their sole and separate use. By a law of 1861, married women in New York received power to control property, including wages, and authority to will property was given them in 1867. ”

“ The law which enables a married woman to hold her own property does not forbid her to give it to the man of her heart, if she so pleases; and it does protect many women who otherwise would be reduced to the extremest misery. ”

“ That husband and wife should be tenants in common of property, without survivorship, but with a partition on the death of one; that a wife should be competent to discharge trusts and powers the same as a single woman; that the statute in respect to a married woman's property be changed so that her property could descend as though she had been unmarried; that married women should be entitled to execute letters testamentary, and of administration; that married women should have power to make contracts and transact business as though unmarried ”

“ The equity courts are now conceding limited proprietary rights to married women by enforcing premarital settlements or trust arrangements that designate certain property as a wife's separate estate and exempt it from control by the husband. Such protective devices generally reflected a father's desire to shield his daughter from poverty and benefited only the landed aristocracy in practice. Also, husbands are not allowed to punish and beat their wives as before. But the lower rank of men were slow to give this up. A wife could have the security of the peace against her husband. ”