DOWER. In law, the share or portion of the real estate of a deceased husband which passes to his wife for her natural life. At com mon law it consists of one-third of all the lands and tenements held in fee simple or fee tail by the husband at any time during coverture to which any issue of the marriage might have by possibility become heir. This right attached during the hie of the husband and was not sub ject to his debts.
Dower is of ancient origin and has been subject to frequent change. In England it was known before the Norman conquest, and rec ords show it to have been in vogue there in 1100, at the time of Henry I, and it was recog nized in the Magna Charta of King John in 1215. It is known to Mohammedan law as well as to many other systems of law.
In England it was early found that the common-law dower ' generally served as an obstacle to the free alienation of real property, and this led to various methods of barring it, among them being uses to bar dower, which prevented purchasers from acquiring estates of inheritance. At the time of Henry VIII a statute was enacted to bar dower by the grant to the wife of a jointure before the marriage. This practice was superseded and the whole subject reformed by the statute of 1834, the terms ,of which permit the husband to defeat the dower, as by will or deed, thus leaving subject to dower only the real property of which he was seized at his death. Other changes were made by this act, including the extension of dower to embrace equitable es tates of inheritance.
In the United States many jurisdictions fol low the rules of the common law, at times some what modified by judicial interpretation, by statute or by constitutional limitations. How
ever, in other jurisdictions some very vsaluable changes have been introduced. In a nurtilier of States dower has been superseded and a different interest substituted. By some of these statutory changes property acquired by the husband during coverture becomes com munity property, belonging jointly to husband and wife, vesting absolutely in the latter on the death of the husband. Statutes have been en acted in some States which make personalty, unlike the rule at common law, the subject of dower. Dower is not a contract right, hut is founded upon public policy, the object being the support of the wife and the care and edu cation of the younger children after the death of the father. Dower in real property is deter mined by the law of the place where such prop erty is located, hut dower in personal property is governed by the law of the domicile of the husband. Statutes abolishing the right of dower after it has vested by the •death of the husband have been declared unconstitutional.
Dower at the present day may be barred by a fair antenuptial or postnuptial agreement in lieu of dower, by a reasonable separation agreement, by acceptance on the part of the wife of a devise or bequest in lieu of dower and by the wife's elopement and adultery.
See HUSBAND AND WIFE.