COVERTURE

Coverture is the legal concept that a woman's legal rights were merged with those of her husband, part of the common law of England and the United States throughout most of the 1800s. The idea was described in William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England in the late 1700s.Under traditional English common law an adult unmarried woman was a considered to have the legal status of feme sole, while a married woman had the status of feme covert. 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. As it has been pithily expressed, husband and wife were one person as far as the law was concerned, and that person was the husband. A married woman could not own property, sign legal documents or enter into a contract, obtain an education against her husband's wishes, or keep a salary for herself. If a wife was permitted to work, under the laws of coverture she was required to relinquish her wages to her husband. In certain cases, a woman did not have individual legal liability for her misdeeds, since it was legally assumed that she was acting under the orders of her husband, and generally a husband and wife were not allowed to testify either for or against each other. Judges and lawyers referred to the overall principle as "coverture". The United States Supreme Court upheld the idea of coverture in the case of Bradwell v. Illinois, 1873. Even before that time, though, many states had begun reforming marriage laws to eliminate or reduce the effects of coverture.
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coverture
\cov"er*ture\ (k?v"?r-t?r; 135), n. [of. coverture,f. couverture.]
1. covering; shelter; defense; hiding. protected by walls or other like coverture. beatrice, who even now is couched in the woodbine coverture.
2. (law) the condition of a woman during marriage, because she is considered under the cover, influence, power, and protection of her husband, and therefore called a feme covert, or femme couverte.