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- Title
Common law versus common practice: the use of marriage settlements in early modern England.
- Authors
Erickson, Amy Louise
- Abstract
The article argues that the primary purpose of a marriage settlement in early modern England was to preserve the wife's property rights. According to the author, wives of all classes sought to protect their property, but this does not imply that their only concern was to isolate or hoard their own personal wealth. Property at this time was without doubt a family concern. There is clear evidence that women had an economic importance within the family. Slightly more than half of the settlements in probate accounts were contracts for the benefit of the bride's children from a previous marriage. Married women for whom accounts were filed or who made wills must, of necessity, have made a premarital contract for some type of separate estate, although the arrangement is rarely specified. The marriage settlements in probate accounts, as they were never litigated, were comparatively peaceably agreed to and carried out, whether it was a widow administering her husband's goods or a widower acting as executor for his wife, whom he had agreed by premarital contract might make her own will. When more than one probate document survives for a couple, their marital property arrangements are less likely to remain obscure.
- Subjects
ENGLAND; MARRIAGE settlements; INHERITANCE &; succession; PROPERTY rights; MARRIAGE law; SOCIAL conditions of women
- Publication
Economic History Review, 1990, Vol 43, Issue 1, p21
- ISSN
0013-0117
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.2307/2596511