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Coverture (sometimes spelled couverture) was a legal doctrine whereby, upon marriage, a woman's legal rights and obligations were subsumed by those of her husband, in accordance with the wife's legal status of feme covert. An unmarried woman, a feme sole, had the right to own property and make contracts in her own name. Coverture was enshrined in the common law of England for several centuries and throughout most of the 19th century, influencing some other common law jurisdictions. According to Arianne Chernock, coverture did not apply in Scotland, but whether it applied in Wales is unclear.〔Chernock, Arianne, ''Men and the Making of Modern British Feminism'', ''op. cit.'', pp. 18 (n. omitted) & 86.〕 After the rise of feminism in the mid-19th century, coverture came under increasing criticism as oppressive towards women, hindering them from exercising ordinary property rights and entering professions. Coverture was first substantially modified by late 19th century Married Women's Property Acts passed in various common-law legal jurisdictions, and was weakened and eventually eliminated by subsequent reforms. Certain aspects of coverture (mainly concerned with preventing a wife from unilaterally incurring major financial obligations for which her husband would be liable) survived as late as the 1960s in some states of the United States. == Principle of coverture == Under traditional English common law, an adult unmarried woman was considered to have the legal status of ''feme sole'', while a married woman had the status of ''feme covert''. These terms 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"). The principle of coverture was described in William Blackstone's ''Commentaries on the Laws of England'' in the late 18th century: A ''feme sole'' had the right to own property and make contracts in her own name, while 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 wife 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 a wife were not allowed to testify either for or against each other. A queen of England, whether she was a queen consort or a queen regnant, was generally exempted from the legal requirements of coverture, as understood by Blackstone. 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「coverture」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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