Dower
Dower is a provision accorded traditionally by a husband or his family, to a wife for her support should she become widowed. It was settled on the bride by agreement at the time of the wedding, or as provided by law.
The dower grew out of the practice of bride price, which was given over to a bride's family well in advance for arranging the marriage, but during the early Middle Ages, was given directly to the bride instead. However, in popular parlance, the term may be used for a life interest in property settled by a husband on his wife at any time, not just at the wedding. The verb to dower is sometimes used.
In popular usage, the term dower may be confused with:
- A dowager is a widow. The term is especially used of a noble or royal widow who no longer occupies the position she held during the marriage. For example, Queen Elizabeth was technically the dowager queen after the death of George VI, and Princess Lilian was the Dowager Duchess of Halland in heraldic parlance. Such a dowager will receive the income from her dower property.
- Property brought to the marriage by the bride is called a dowry. But the word dower has been used since Chaucer in the sense of dowry, and is recognized as a definition of dower in the Oxford English Dictionary.
- Property made over to the bride's family at the time of the wedding is a bride price. This property does not pass to the bride herself.
Meaning Of Dower
The bride received a right to certain property from the bridegroom or his family. It was intended to ensure her livelihood in widowhood, and it was to be kept separate and in the wife's possession.
Dower is the gift given by the groom to the bride, customarily on the morning after the wedding, though all dowerings from the man to his fiancée, either during the betrothal period, or wedding, during marriage or afterwards, even as late as in the testamentary dowering, are understood as dowers if specifically intended for the maintenance of the wife.
Dower was a property arrangement for marriage first used in early medieval German cultures, and the Catholic Church drove its adoption into other countries, in order to improve the wife's security by this additional benefit. The practice of dower was prevalent in those parts of Europe influenced by Germanic Scandinavian culture, such as Sweden, Germany, Normandy and successor states of the Langobardian kingdom.
The husband was legally prevented from using the wife's dower — as contrasted with her dowry, which was brought to the marriage by the bride and used by both spouses. This often meant that the woman's legal representative, usually a male relative, became guardian or executor of the dower, to ensure that it was not squandered.
Usually, the wife was free from kin limitations to use her dower to whatever and whomever she pleased. It may have become the property of her next marriage, been given to an ecclesiastical institution, or been inherited by her children from other relationships than that from which she received it.
Types
In English legal history, there were originally five kinds of dower:- Dower ad ostium ecclesiae, was the closest to modern meaning of dower. It was the property secured by law, in bride's name at the church porch. This was optional. Dower wasn't the same as bride price; rather, it was legal assignment of movable or fixed property that became the bride's property.
- Dower de la plus belle was a hereditary conveyance of tenure by knight service. It was abolished in 1660, by the act which did away with old tenures.
- Dower ex assensu patris, was the dower given to the bride by the father of the bridegroom. This became obsolete long before it was formally abolished.
- At common law, dower was of a very different nature. It was a legal declaration of a wife's right to property, while the husband lived, which he would manage; which would transfer to the wife's children when they were born; and which would secure her livelihood were she widowed. A dower at common law was not liable for the husband's debts — which became controversial after many tried to use it to shield their property from the collection of debts. The Dower Acts of 19th century abolished this.
- Dower by custom was an attempt to recognize the rules of dower customary at each manor and in each region. Customary dowers were also abolished in the 19th century, and replaced with uniform inheritance laws.
History
Roman era
Dower is thought to have been suggested by the bride price which Tacitus found to be usual among the Germans. This bride price he terms dos, but contrasts it with the dos of the Roman law, which was a gift on the part of the wife to the husband, while in Germany the gift was made by the husband to the wife. There was indeed in the Roman law what was termed donatio propter nuptias, a gift from the family of the husband, but this was only required if the dos were brought on the part of the wife. So too in the special instance of a widow of a husband rich at the time of his death, an ordinance of the Christian Emperor Justinian secured her the right to a part of her husband's property, of which no disposition of his could deprive her.Establishment in Western Europe
Dower payments evolved from the Germanic custom of paying a bride price, which over centuries morphed into the bride gift. After the introduction of Christianity, the custom of dower persisted as a method of exacting from the husband at marriage a promise to endow his wife, a promise retained in form even now in the marriage ritual of the Established Church in England. Dower is mentioned in an ordinance of King Philip Augustus of France, and in the almost contemporaneous Magna Carta ; but it seems to have already become customary law in Normandy, Sicily, and Naples, as well as in England. The object of both ordinance and charter was to regulate the amount of the dower where this was not the subject of voluntary arrangement, dower by English law consisting of a wife's life estate in one-third of the lands of the husband "of which any issue which she might have had might by possibility have been heir".England and other common law countries
There is judicial authority of the year 1310 for the proposition that dower was favoured by law, and at a less remote period it was said to be with life and liberty one of three things which "the law favoreth". In England in the late 18th century, it became common for men to hold land with a trust that prevented their wives' acquiring dower. Accordingly, the English statute, the Fines and Recoveries Act 1833 was passed to impair the inviolability of dower by empowering husbands to cut off by deed or will their wives from dower. Wives married before the Act still had to acknowledge the deed before a commissioner to bar their right to dower in property which their husband sold. This was simpler than the previous procedure, which had required a fine to be levied in the Court of Common Pleas, a fictitious proceeding, by which she and her husband formally remitted their right to the property to the purchaser.In English law, dower was one third of the lands seised in fee by the husband during the marriage. However, in the early modern period, it was common for a wife to bar her right to dower in advance under a marriage settlement, under which she agreed to take instead a jointure, that is a particular interest in her husband's property, either a particular share, or a life interest in a particular part of the land, or an annuity. This was often part of an arrangement by which she gave up her property to her husband in exchange for her jointure, which would accordingly be greater than a third. Strictly dower was only available from land that her husband owned, but a life tenant under a settlement was often given power to appoint a jointure for his wife. The wife would retain her right to dower even if her husband sold the property; however this right could also be barred by a fictitious court proceeding known as levying a fine. The widow of a copyholder was usually provided for by the custom of the manor with freebench, an equivalent right to dower, but often a half, rather than a third.