Money given to a feme covert for her maintenance, because her husband is an unthrift.
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Section 8 maintained the earlier incapacity of a feme covert to make a will. This was reformed in the late 19th century and formally repealed in 1969.
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Under traditional English common law, an adult unmarried woman was considered to have the legal status of feme sole, while a married woman had the status of feme covert. These terms are English spellings of medieval Anglo-Norman phrases (the modern standard French spellings would be femme seule "single woman" and femme couverte, literally "covered woman"). The principle of coverture was described in William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England in the late 18th century: A feme sole had the right to own property and make contracts in her own name, while a feme covert was not recognized as having legal rights and obligations distinct from those of her husband in most respects. Instead, through marriage a woman's existence was incorporated into that of her husband, so that she had very few recognized individual rights of her own.
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She applied to the United States Supreme Court bar after having practiced for the minimum three years and secured Albert G. Riddle as sponsor, but her motion was also denied on gender grounds.David C. Frederick, Oral Argument in the Supreme Court p.p. 31-32 (2003) Lockwood thus struggled against both social practice and the limited legal standing accorded women. Under English Common Law, Lockwood was considered a "feme covert" (English version of medieval Anglo-Norman legal term), that is, a married woman.
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One month later, Elizabeth's father died of a stroke, never having learned of his daughter's marriage. As a result, he left the property at Graeme Park in her name, though under colonial law, Elizabeth was a feme covert, meaning that all of her property belonged to her husband when they were married. Henry spent much of the couple's marriage in England and in Philadelphia, working for the British. When the British evacuated the city of Philadelphia in 1778, Henry left for London.
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Coverture (sometimes spelled couverture) was a legal doctrine whereby, upon marriage, a woman's legal rights and obligations were subsumed by those of her husband, in accordance with the wife's legal status of feme covert. An unmarried woman, a feme sole, had the right to own property and make contracts in her own name. Coverture arises from the legal fiction that a husband and wife are one person. Coverture was established in the common law of England for several centuries and throughout most of the 19th century, influencing some other common-law jurisdictions.
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Portrait of an English married couple, circa 1780. The system of feme sole and feme covert developed in England in the High and Late Middle Ages as part of the common law system, which had its origins in the legal reforms of Henry II and other medieval English kings. Medieval legal treatises, such as that famously known as Bracton, described the nature of coverture and its impact on married women's legal actions. Bracton states that husband and wife were a single person, being one flesh and one blood, a principle known as 'unity of person'.
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At this point, Grace began to advocate very strongly that the Galloway estate was hers and that she should not be punished for the mistakes her husband made. Historian Carol Berkin claims, "Grace Galloway sought to separate her fate from her husband's, to demand that the punishment meted out to him for his actions fall on him alone." She lost this battle. While marriage and feme covert (married women whose legal rights were absorbed by those of their husband's) left Grace without legal rights, politics had erased her social standing.
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Coverture (sometimes spelled couverture) was a legal doctrine whereby, upon marriage, a woman's legal rights were subsumed by those of her husband. Coverture was enshrined in the common law of England and the United States throughout most of the 19th century. The idea was described in William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England in the late 18th century. Under traditional English common law an adult unmarried woman was considered to have the legal status of feme sole, while a married woman had the status of feme covert.
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These are English spellings of medieval Anglo-Norman phrases (the modern standard French spellings would be femme seule "single woman" and femme couverte, literally "covered woman"). A feme sole had the right to own property and make contracts in her own name. A feme covert was not recognized as having legal rights and obligations distinct from those of her husband in most respects. Instead, through marriage a woman's existence was incorporated into that of her husband, so that she had very few recognized individual rights of her own.
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According to the Custom, a married woman was a feme covert subject to marital power, meaning she was legally considered to be a minor and so was under the guardianship of her husband. As for the husband, he was the legal "head and master" of the marital community property. As such, the wife was unable to make transactions without the permission of her husband. She was, however, protected from egregious control of her affairs by her husband by the customary provision that he had to secure her consent before mortgaging, selling, or alienating any of the couple's community property.
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A portrait of Mary Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. By John Opie, Tate Gallery. The situation of women appearing in Jane Austen's novels shows at times their inferior status, on a legal as well as a financial level. Thus, according to William Blackstone, in his Commentaries on the Laws of England (Oxford, 1765), man and woman become, by marriage, one and the same person: as long as the marriage lasts, the woman's legal existence is viewed as "suspended", and all her actions are done "under her husband's cover" (becoming herself a feme-covert).
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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". 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.
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