STATUTORY MODIFICATION OF TILE COMMON LAW. The preceding statement is an outline of the rights and liabilities of the husband and wife according to the common-law rules. Ilalf a cen tury ago public attention was first directed tow ard the essential injustice of the common law to married women. The agitation which followed took fast hold upon the public conscience, and ultimately found both in England and the United States in a series of statutes known as married women's enabling acts. New York was the first State to adopt this reform. by an act framed in 1S48. and its example was followed by other States in rapid succession. The various statutes relating to the subject have been re peatedly revised. and their scope widened by amendment, until at the present time in most jurisdictions, though the statutes differ in minor particulars. married women are on a substantial equality with their husbands with reference to both personal rights and rights of property. and each is practically independent of the other with reference to all matters outside the obligation of the status marriage or the marriage contract itself. The effect of modern statutory law will lie best 'understood by briefly mentioning sonic of the more important exceptions to the fore going statement. In probably all jurisdictions the husband is still under obligation to support his wife, and to provide her with necessaries, and the wife, by acting as his agent, may still bind the husband by contract. As the husband no e acquires any interest in the wife's persotial property or closes in action, lie is not subjeet to the corresponding obligation to answer fur her torts and contracts, they being an obligation of the wife alone, fur which she may he separately sued. Either may sue or be sued independently of the other. While the husband inay no longer take the wife's earnings, lie is in a general sense still entitled to the wife's ser vices, so long as she continues to give them to him; and lie may ::111e in his own right to re cover for torts causing his of her services or ex penditure by him for necessaries. and either may sue for alienation of the affections of the other. The law of domicile of the husband and wire re mains unchanged. The wife still has dower in the husband's real estate. and in some of the Southern and 'Western States she has by statute a homestead in the husband's lands. In many States the husband may acquire curtest' in the wife's real estate, but in some, like New York, the wife may defeat hula right by conveyance or will. In some States, is NeW Jersey, the wife cannot convey her real estate as freely as the husband may. but must. be examined apart from Her husband by a notary, commissioner. or judge before oinking the conveyance. who must ascer
tain whether the conveyance is freely made with out, coercion by the husband. Estates by the en tirety are now generally obsolete, the husband and wife taking as co-tenants. or tenants in com mon. lit nearly all jurisdictions statutes of dis tribution (q.v.I have been enacted. by which either party to the marriage may acquire a part of the personal property of the other in ease of his or her death without having disposed of the personal property by will. In other particulars these statutes follou• closely the analogy of the law of inheritance. Provision has also been made by statute in most jurisdictions for directly com pelling the husband to support the wife by means of a quasi-eriminal proceeding brought at her instance. The same result may be obtained by the various statutory forms of judicial separation Dry nRcE) . by which the husband may be compelled to pay the {vile certain stints of money, or alimony ((1.v.).
ScoTI.AND. The law of husband and wife in Scotland as regards their personal rights and dis abilities, and the property during the marriage, does not substantially differ from the law of England. Ina the following points may be noticed: As regards their persons and personal rights and crimes the law is the same. It is often said that in Scotland the movable property of both husband and wife becomes a kind of joint-stock property, called goods in communion ; but this phrase has no meaning except with reference to the prineiple of the division of the property after the death of one of the parties and the dissolu tion of the marriage. The husband is. as in England. entire master, except that he cannot on his death-bed bequeath more than a share of the property away from the wife. The wife's mov able property becomes the husband's, and her heritable property remains subject to the hus band's life-rent. When she disposes of her heri table property she must ratify the deed by going before a magistrate, and acknowledging that she acts of her own free will. When the husband deserts her she may, as in England, obtain a judge's order to protect her earnings and moneys, and she has a preferable right to a reasonable provision out of any property to which she may succeed (Conjugal Rights Amendment Acts, 1861 and 1874). By the Married Women's Property (Scotland) Act, 1877, the produce of a wife's industry or skill is excluded from the rights of her husband, and his liability for her antenuptial debts is restricted to the amount she brought into the marriage. A wife has, in Scotland, the power to bind her husband for necessaries: but the husband can, by a process of inhibition, give notice to tradesmen not to supply her at his ex pense, and this notice will be binding on all the King's subjects.