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Concept
Coverture
Summary
Coverture (sometimes spelled couverture) was a legal doctrine in the English common law in which a married woman's legal existence was considered to be merged with that of her husband, so that she had no independent legal existence of her own. Upon marriage, coverture provided that a woman became a feme covert, whose legal rights and obligations were mostly subsumed by those of her husband. An unmarried woman, or feme sole, had the right to own property and make contracts in her own name.
Coverture was well established in the common law for several centuries and was inherited by many other common law jurisdictions, including the United States. According to historian Arianne Chernock, coverture did not apply in Scotland, but whether it applied in Wales is unclear.
After the rise of the women's rights movement in the mid-19th century, coverture was increasingly criticised as oppressive, hindering women 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 jurisdictions, and was weakened and eventually eliminated by later 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.
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").
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