Married Women's Property Acts in the United States

The Married Women's Property Acts are laws enacted by the individual states of the United States beginning in 1839, usually under that name and sometimes, especially when extending the provisions of a Married Women's Property Act, under names describing a specific provision, such as the Married Women's Earnings Act.

Under the common law legal doctrine known as coverture, a married woman in Great Britain's North American colonies and later in the United States had hardly any legal existence apart from her husband. Her rights and obligations were subsumed under his. She could not own property, enter into contracts, or earn a salary. Over several decades, beginning in 1839, statutes that enabled women to control real and personal property, participate in contracts and lawsuits, inherit independently of their husbands, work for a salary, and write wills were enacted. Usually, concerns for family integrity and protecting a household from economic crisis, rather than a liberal conception of the role of women in society, motivated these changes. Change came in piecemeal fashion. As late as 1867 a decision of the Supreme Court of Illinois in Cole v. Van Riper noted that "It is simply impossible that a married woman should be able to control and enjoy her property as if she were sole, without practically leaving her at liberty to annul the marriage." According to one analysis, the legislation came in three phases—allowing married women to own property, then to keep their own income, then to engage in business—and advanced more quickly in the West, exactly like female suffrage did.

Connecticut's law of 1809 allowing a married woman to write a will was a forerunner, though its impact on property and contracts was so slight that it is not counted as the first statute to address married women's property rights.

Beginning in the nineteenth century, women in the Northern states were the principal advocates of enhancing women's property rights, but the first legislation embodying some of the changes they advocated was enacted in the American South. The Panic of 1837 inspired attempts to limit the impact of such an economic crisis by protecting family assets.Mississippi initiated the trend in 1839 with its Married Women's Property Act that allowed married women to own property. Any attempt to collect debt from her husband could not reach property only she owned. She had the right to refuse to sell the property, but could not manage that property or sell it without her husband's consent. Parents who gave property to a daughter upon marriage also enjoyed the protection the Act provided from a son-in-law's mishandling of his family's affairs. The property a woman could own and protect from her husband's creditors included slaves.

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