Married Women's Property Acts

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roona Simpson
Keyword(s):  
Married Women's Property Acts

Précis of a Lecture on the Married Women'S Property Acts 1870 and 1882

1933 ◽  
Vol 4 (02) ◽  
pp. 105-117
Author(s):  
David Houseman
Keyword(s):  
Married Woman ◽  
Unmarried Woman ◽  
Legal Principles ◽  
Life Assurance ◽  
Married Women's Property Acts ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Law ◽  
Assurance Contracts ◽  
As If

The law which governs life assurance contracts, their formation and their execution is, to a very large extent, the same law as that which governs mercantile contracts generally. The titles to life policies are affected by the law of contract, of mortgage, of partnership, and so on. There are, however, some legal principles and statutory provisions which affect life assurance alone, and among them are the following sections in the Married Women's Property Acts, 1870 and 1882.Married Women's Property Act, 1870, Section 10.A married woman may effect a policy of insurance upon her own life or the life of her husband for her separate use, and the same and all benefit thereof, if expressed on the face of it to be so effected, shall enure accordingly, and the contract in such policy shall be as valid as if made with an unmarried woman.

A Radical Demand Effect: Early US Feminists and the Married Women's Property Acts

2014 ◽  
Vol 38 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 221-250 ◽  
Author(s):  
Holly J. McCammon ◽  
Sandra C. Arch ◽  
Erin M. Bergner
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Equal Rights Amendment ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Married Women's Property Acts ◽  
Economic Downturns ◽  
Property Changes ◽  
The Right ◽  
Demand Effect ◽  
Collective Activism

Numerous scholars consider the economic origins of the late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century US married women's property acts. Researchers investigate how economic downturns and women's inroads into business spurred lawmakers to reform property laws to give married women the right to own separate property. Such economic explanations, however, are only a partial story. Our investigation reveals the important role of women's collective activism in winning these legal changes. Women mobilized for property rights often as they pressed for voting rights and, in one case, as they campaigned for an equal rights amendment. We examine circumstances leading to passage of married women's property acts in seven states to show that as women mobilized for property rights alongside voting rights or a broader equal rights law, a radical demand effect unfolded. Lawmakers often considered demands for woman suffrage or an equal rights amendment as more far-reaching and thus more radical and threatening. Such feminist demands, then, provided a foil for property-rights activism, and the contrast led lawmakers to view property demands as more moderate. In addition, as they pressed for these combined reforms, women often engaged in hybrid framing that allowed them to moderate their demand for property reforms by linking their property goals to beliefs already widely accepted. The confluence of these circumstances led political leaders to deem property changes as more moderate and acceptable in an effort to steer feminists away from their radical goals. In the end, the radical demand effect created a political opportunity for passage of the married women's property acts.

scholarly journals The Narrowing of the Gender Wealth Gap across the Nineteenth-Century United States

2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 255-281 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine L. McDevitt ◽  
James R. Irwin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
General View ◽  
Eastern United States ◽  
Legal Reforms ◽  
Published Evidence ◽  
Married Women's Property Acts ◽  
Wealth Gap ◽  
Nineteenth Century United States ◽  
Rough Outline

Shammas (1994) documented the expansion of women's wealth holding across the nineteenth-century United States, explaining it as the result of the married women's property acts (MWPAs) passed in most of states starting circa 1840. We look at the timing of the expansion of women's wealth holding, drawing on archival and published evidence from probate records. Starting with Richmond, Virginia, and its agricultural hinterland, we consider a variety of places, urban and rural, in the South and North, to suggest a general view of the eastern United States. In rough outline, while colonial women were at most one-tenth of probated wealth holders, antebellum women were at least one-fifth. Levels of women's wealth holding increased even more. The substantial narrowing of the gender wealth gap cannot be attributed to the MWPAs that followed. Perhaps those acts will explain the further narrowing of the gender wealth gap in the later nineteenth century, but that narrowing might better be understood as a continuation of previous trends. Our results remind that some legal reforms can better be understood as reflections than causes of social change.

Some Observations on the Life Assurance Clauses of the “Married Women's Property Acts”, 1870 and 1882

1888 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-80
Author(s):  
William Hughes
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Mathematical Aspect ◽  
Life Assurance ◽  
Legal Questions ◽  
Scientific Analysis ◽  
Married Women's Property Acts ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Legal Character

The profession of an Actuary, though mainly concerned with the science of finance as applied to transactions dependent upon the duration of human life, involves the consideration, more or less minute, of many other subjects not immediately connected with scientific analysis and computations. There is a practical side to our profession which has, perhaps, been sometimes in danger of being overlooked, and it has been hinted, if not openly stated, that the Institute too exclusively concerns itself with the mathematical aspect of life assurance to the neglect of other matters which might very properly engage its attention. Among the most obvious of such subjects are those which deal with questions of law, the forms of the contracts between assurants and assurers, and the numerous questions which arise as to their interpretation and execution. Such questions arise daily in our official practice, but have seldom formed the subject of our deliberations as an Institute. The great interest, however, which was excited last session by Mr. C. D. Higham's paper on the Assignment of Life Policies, naturally suggested that papers on other legal questions would be welcomed by the Institute; and it may be incidentally remarked that a subject of a legal character is peculiarly appropriate to the occasion of what is practically our first ordinary meeting in this ancient hall, formerly the seat of one of the Inns of Chancery.

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