Dower
idea · 2 works · 2 mentions · 2 anchored passages
dos · dos rationalis · dower
in the texts
Ancient Law
The customary legal right securing a widow's share of her husband's land, promoted by the Church.
The provision for the widow was attributable to the exertions of the Church, which never relaxed its solicitude for the interest of wives surviving their husbands—winning, perhaps one of the most arduous of its triumphs when, after exacting for two or three centuries an express promise from the husband at marriage to endow his wife, it at length succeeded in engrafting the principle of Dower on th …
Magna Carta: A Commentary on the Great Charter of King John
The portion, customarily one-third, of a deceased husband's lands set aside to support his widow, whose prompt and unencumbered assignment is guaranteed by the Charter.
—“The widow shall have assigned to her for her dower the third part of all her husband’s land which he had in his lifetime unless a smaller share had been given her at the door of the church.
A wife’s dower is here the portion of her husband’s lands set aside to support her in her widowhood.
nor shall she give anything for her dower, or for her marriage portion, or for the inheritance which her husband and she held on the day of the death of that husband;