laws which
declare that husband and wife have the same power to dispose of
separate property. Comparatively few women in this country have
property when married, especially if young at the time, and the same
is true of the majority of men, but afterwards the woman may never
hope to accumulate any, as the joint earnings of the marriage
partnership belong exclusively to the husband, and the duties of the
average household prevent the wife from engaging in outside work.
However, in order that she might not be left absolutely penniless
after years of labor, the Common Law provided that she should be
entitled to "dower," i. e., the possession, for her lifetime, of
one-third of all the real estate of which her husband was possessed in
fee simple during the marriage. That is, she should receive the
life-use of one-third of any realty she might have brought into the
marriage and one-third of all they had earned together. But if the
husband had converted these into cash, bonds, stocks or other personal
property, she could legally claim nothing. He had "curtesy," i. e.,
the life-use of all her real estate, (sometimes dependent on the birth
of children, sometimes not), and usually the whole of her personal
estate absolutely.

Curtesy has now been abolished in over one-half the States. The law of
dower still exists in more than one-half, but special statutes in
regard to personal property and the wife's separate estate have been
made so liberal that in comparatively few States is she left in the
helpless condition of olden times. In about one-half of them she takes
from one-third to the whole (if there are no children) of both real
and personal estate absolutely; but in all of them it is only at the
death of the husband that she has any share or control of the joint
accumulations except such as he chooses to allow. At the death of the
wife all of these belong legally to the husband and she can not secure
to her children or her parents any part of the property which she has
helped to earn. Space forbids going into a discussion of the general
upheaval which follows the death of the husband, the inventories
which must be taken, the divisions which must be made, generally
resulting in the breaking up of the home; while at the death of the
wife all passes peacefully into the possession of the husband and
there is no scattering of the family unless he wishes it. A general
but necessarily superficial statement of the property laws will