privy examination

A number of U.S. states continued to require privy examinations into the late 20th century.

Nineteenth-century courts in the United States also enforced state privy examination laws.

Courts in the 19th-century United States also continued to require privy examinations of married women who sold their property.

A privy examination was a practice in which a married woman who wished to sell her property had to be separately examined by a judge or justice of the peace outside of the presence of her husband and asked if her husband was pressuring her into signing the document.