Definition
A historical legal remedy with two distinct but related applications:
1. (Common law) A proceeding available to an heir upon reaching majority to correct an over-assignment of dower made during his minority. Where a widow received a larger share of her deceased husband's lands than she was legally entitled to — because the assignment was made while the heir was a minor and lacked full capacity to protect his interests — admeasurement of dower allowed the heir, once of age, to compel a reduction of the widow's portion to its proper legal measure.
2. (American statutory) In some U.S. states, the term was applied to a distinct proceeding: a widow's affirmative action to compel the initial assignment of dower when the heir or terre-tenant had failed to set it out for her. In this usage, the remedy runs in the opposite direction — it is the widow, not the heir, who initiates the proceeding.
Common Confusion
The two applications of this term point in opposite directions, which creates interpretive risk in historical sources. The classical English remedy is brought by the heir against the widow to reduce an excessive assignment. The American statutory usage is brought by the widow against the heir to obtain an assignment in the first place. A researcher encountering the term in a nineteenth-century American source must determine which sense is intended before drawing conclusions about who held the grievance and what outcome was sought.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is an artifact of the common law of dower and appears almost exclusively in sources predating the widespread abolition of dower in American jurisdictions during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Several research traps are worth flagging:
First, temporal context is critical. The classical common law remedy presupposed the old system of dower in which a widow was entitled to a life estate in one-third of her husband's qualifying lands. Once dower was abolished or replaced by elective share statutes, admeasurement of dower lost its procedural footing entirely. Researchers relying on pre-abolition sources must not assume the remedy survived in a given jurisdiction.
Second, the term's meaning shifted in American practice. Bouvier notes that some states repurposed the label for a widow's compulsory assignment proceeding — the functional inverse of the English remedy. State-specific statutory compilations from the mid-to-late 1800s are the most reliable guide to which usage a particular jurisdiction adopted.
Third, this term connects directly to the broader dower framework in the Law Mind corpus. Researching admeasurement without first grounding in the elements of dower itself — the nature of the widow's interest, the assignment process, and the role of the heir — will make the procedural mechanics difficult to follow.
Fourth, Bouvier's characterization of the remedy as "still subsisting, though of rare occurrence" reflects the mid-nineteenth century moment at which most American legal encyclopedists were writing. That observation should not be read forward into the twentieth century.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's and Bouvier's are in close agreement on the core definition and cite the same authority: Blackstone's Commentaries, Book II, Chapter 8. Both identify the remedy as belonging to the heir and arising upon majority. Bouvier adds the observation that the remedy remained technically available in his time but was rarely invoked, and cites Washburn on Real Property and early American case law for its continued recognition.
Where the dictionaries diverge is in emphasis. Black's is more direct in flagging the American statutory inversion — using "widow" as the moving party to compel assignment. Bouvier's entry as reproduced here is truncated at precisely the point where it appears to have taken up this second statutory meaning, suggesting the full entry addressed it in greater detail.
Neither dictionary provides substantial treatment of the procedural mechanics — the form of the writ, the measure by which excess was calculated, or the method of reapportionment. For that, Washburn's Treatise on the American Law of Real Property is the more useful source, as both dictionaries indicate.
Jurisdictional Note
Dower itself was abolished by statute in most American states during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and admeasurement of dower has no operative role in jurisdictions that have replaced dower with elective share regimes. The term retains research relevance primarily in historical property disputes, title chains, and estate litigation arising under pre-abolition law.