Married Women's Property Act 1870
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| Long title | An Act to amend the law relating to the property of married women. |
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| Citation | 33 & 34 Vict. c.93 |
| Territorial extent | England and Wales |
| Dates | |
| Repealed | 1 January 1883 |
| Other legislation | |
| Amended by | Married Women's Property Act 1870 Amendment Act 1874 |
| Repealed by | Married Women's Property Act 1882 |
| Relates to | Married Women's Property (Scotland) Act 1881 |
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Status: Repealed
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The Married Women's Property Act 1870 (33 & 34 Vict. c.93) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that allowed married women to be the legal owners of the money they earned and to inherit property.
Before 1870, any money made by a woman either through a wage, from investment, by gift, or through inheritance automatically became the property of her husband once she was married. Thus, the identity of the wife became legally absorbed into that of her husband, effectively making them one person under the law. Once a woman became married she had no claim to her property as her husband had full control and could do whatever suited him regarding the property: “Thus, a woman, on marrying, relinquished her personal property—moveable property such as money, stocks, furniture, and livestock--- to her husband’s ownership; by law he was permitted to dispose of it at will at any time in the marriage and could even will it away at death”. Even in death a woman’s husband continued to have control over her former property. Married women had few legal rights and were by law not recognized as being a separate legal being – a feme sole. In contrast, single and widowed women were considered in common law to be femes sole, and they already had the right to own property in their own names. Once a woman became married she still had the right to legally own her land or house but she no longer had the rights to do anything with it such as rent out a house that she owned or sell her piece of land: “Thus, a wife retained legal ownership of her real property—immovable property such as housing and land, but she could not manage or control it; she could not sell her real property, rent it, or mortgage it without her husband’s consent”. She could not make contracts or incur debts without his approval. Nor could she sue or be sued in a court of law. Only the extremely wealthy were exempted from these laws: Under the rules of equity, a portion of a married woman's property could be set aside in the form of a trust for her use or the use of her children. However, the legal costs involved in establishing trusts made them unavailable to the vast majority of the population. Women started to try to get the act passed in the 1850s, many years before it was successfully passed: “In the 1850s a group of women had campaigned for the law to be amended with no success. One important woman taking up the cause was Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon (1827-1891). She actively promoted women's rights and in 1854 published A Brief Summary of the Laws in England concerning Women: together with a few observations thereon. She worked hard to reform the married women's property laws. As an artist, she also helped establish the Society for Female Artists in 1857. In 1865, she founded the women-only Kensington Society for which she wrote Reasons for the Enfranchisement of Women in 1866. It is interesting to note she was also an intimate friend of George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), who wrote Middlemarch.
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