feme sole

A feme sole had the right to own property and make contracts in her own name.

Married women had few legal rights and were by law not recognized as being a separate legal being - a feme sole.

feme covert and feme sole - the legal status of adult married women and unmarried women, respectively, under the coverture principle of common law.

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.

I don't know what a feme sole is, but apparently it doesn't have much clout, because one of the legal decisions cited says, "During the husband's lifetime he may dispose of his wife's paraphernalia at his pleasure."

Wives' legal identities were also restored, as the courts were forced to recognize a husband and a wife as two separate legal entities, in the same manner as if the wife was a feme sole.

In contrast to wives, women who never married or who were widowed maintained control over their property and inheritance, owned land and controlled property disposal, since by law any unmarried adult female was considered to be a feme sole.

It says: "The paraphernalia of a married woman, being the suitable ornaments and wearing apparel of a married woman, which have come to her through her husband during coverture, shall be her separate property as if she were a feme sole."

Some of Belknap's land holdings were returned to him or members of his immediate family with the first parliament of Henry IV in October 1399, although his wife Juliana in a noted case was allowed to bring suit as feme sole for certain lands.

The system of feme sole and feme covert developed in England in the High and Late Middle Ages as part of the common law system, which had its origins in the legal reforms of Henry II and other medieval English kings.

In spite of this much-publicized case, it was only in 1882 that, through the Married Women's Property Act, the legal rights of married women became equal to those of unmarried women (called 'feme sole') in that they gained the right to retain full control of their own property.

Before the Act was passed women lost all ownership over their property when they became married: "From the early thirteenth century until 1870, English Common law held that most of the property that a wife had owned as a feme sole came under the control of the husband at the time of the marriage" (Combs 1031).