|
The Married Women's Property Act 1870 (33 & 34 Vict. c.93) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that allowed women to be the legal owners of the money they earned and to inherit property. ==Background== 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 her husband, effectively making them one person under the law. Once a woman became married her property was no longer her own and her husband could choose to dispose of it whenever he thought suitable: “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”.〔Combs, p. 1031〕 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”.〔Combs, p. 1032〕 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''. In 1868, an attempt was revived to get the act passed and in that year a Married Women’s Property Bill was introduced into parliament, which proposed that married women should have the same property rights as unmarried women”.〔Griffin, p. 62〕 A long and energetic campaign by different women's groups and some men led to the passing of this Act. For example, any copyrighted material would have the copyright pass to the husband on marriage. This would be analogous to copyright of the work done as part of the employment being owned by the employer. The Married Women's Property Act of 1870 provided that wages and property which a wife earned through her own work would be regarded as her separate property and, in 1882, this principle was extended to all property, regardless of its source or the time of its acquisition.〔Marriage, Wife Beating and the Law in Victorian England p 101〕 The Act also protected a woman not only from her husband gaining control of her property but also from people that worked for him, his creditor: “These acts generally exempted married women’s property from attachments by creditors of their husbands”. This gave married women a separate statutory estate, and released them from coverture. It was for the first time theoretically possible for married women to live away from their husbands and support their own children themselves. However, widowed women with children, as ''femes soles'', had already had the right to own property and support their children. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Married Women's Property Act 1870」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|