Definition
A plea in the former action of dower *unde nil habet* by which the tenant (the party in possession of the land) contested the validity of the demandant's marriage to the deceased person out of whose lands she claimed dower. The name derives from the Latin and Law French phrase meaning "never coupled in lawful matrimony" — that is, never lawfully married. By interposing this plea, the tenant denied that any valid marriage had taken place, thereby attacking the foundational requirement of a dower claim at its root. If the demandant could not prove a lawful marriage, her dower right failed entirely.
Why It Matters in Research
This term belongs to the specialized vocabulary of real actions — a category of common law procedure largely abolished in England by the mid-nineteenth century and in most American jurisdictions not long after. Researchers encountering *all matrimonie* in historical pleadings, treatises, or case records should understand that the term operates within the now-defunct procedural framework of the writ of dower *unde nil habet*, distinct from the general writ of dower. The plea's function was narrow and technical: it did not challenge the amount of dower or the identity of the lands, but struck at the existence of the marriage itself.
Because dower law and real actions were abolished or replaced by statutory substitutes at different times in different jurisdictions, the term is rarely if ever operative in modern practice. It surfaces almost exclusively in pre-twentieth-century sources — English and early American reports, pleading manuals, and real property treatises. Researchers using Law Mind's historical corpus should note that Burrill's entry is characteristically compressed; fuller treatment of the procedural context appears in Roscoe's *Actions Relating to Real Property* and Greenleaf's *Evidence*. The plea connects directly to the law of evidence because the tenant's denial of the marriage put the demandant to proof, generating a body of doctrine about what evidence sufficed to establish a valid marriage in a dower proceeding.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's entry is terse but accurate in its essentials. The plea is named from its operative words — the denial that the parties were "never coupled in lawful matrimony" — and Burrill correctly identifies the specific action (*dower unde nil habet*) in which it arose, distinguishing it from other dower proceedings. His cross-references to Roscoe's *Real Actions* and Greenleaf's *Evidence* point researchers toward the two most useful elaborations: Roscoe for procedure and pleading mechanics, Greenleaf for the evidentiary standards applied once the plea was joined.
What Burrill does not address is the relationship between this plea and the broader law of clandestine or irregular marriages, which generated real litigation. Courts sometimes had to determine whether a marriage by banns, by license, or by informal ceremony sufficed to support a dower claim against a determined tenant. The plea *all matrimonie* was the procedural vehicle through which those substantive questions were raised. Historical sources that treat the plea in isolation — as a purely technical pleading matter — can mislead researchers into missing the substantive marriage-validity doctrine it implicated.
Jurisdictional Note
Real actions, including dower *unde nil habet*, were abolished in England by the Real Property Limitation Act 1833 and the Common Law Procedure Act 1860, and replaced by statutory dower regimes that were themselves subsequently abolished. In American states, dower was variously retained, modified, or abolished by statute, with most states completing abolition or replacement by the mid-twentieth century. The plea *all matrimonie* has no operative role in any current jurisdiction.