Definition
Descovert (also *descouvert*) is an archaic Law French term meaning uncovered, open, or free from the legal condition of coverture. It describes the status of a woman who is not subject to the legal disabilities imposed on a married woman under the common law doctrine of coverture — that is, a woman who is either unmarried (a feme sole) or who has been widowed or divorced and thereby restored to independent legal capacity.
The term is the antonym of *covert*, which described a married woman whose legal identity was merged into that of her husband. A woman descovert could sue and be sued in her own name, hold and convey property, enter into contracts, and exercise legal rights that were suspended during coverture.
Common Confusion
DESCOVERT vs. FEME SOLE: The two terms describe the same underlying legal condition from different angles. *Feme sole* is the more commonly encountered term in English legal sources and identifies the category of woman (an unmarried woman, or a married woman granted sole trader status by local custom or equity). *Descovert* is the older Law French adjectival form describing the state of being free from coverture, and appears more frequently in early and medieval legal materials than in later common law texts. Researchers encountering *descovert* in historical documents should cross-reference feme sole entries for substantive content.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in early English legal sources written in or influenced by Law French. By the time legal French gave way to English as the primary language of common law pleading and commentary — effectively complete by the late seventeenth century — *descovert* had been supplanted in most practice by *feme sole* and related English-language terminology.
Researchers working in medieval plea rolls, early Year Books, or pre-modern property records may encounter the term as a descriptor of a woman's legal capacity to act. Because the term is purely adjectival and descriptive of status, it rarely appears as a standalone heading in later legal dictionaries; its absence from sources like Black's or Bouvier's reflects the shift in legal language rather than any change in the underlying doctrine.
The concept it describes — the restoration of full legal personality to a woman upon exit from coverture — remained operative in English and American common law until married women's property acts of the nineteenth century gradually dismantled the coverture framework itself. Researchers tracing the history of women's property rights or contractual capacity should treat *descovert* as an entry point into the broader coverture literature rather than a self-contained doctrine.
Be alert to variant spellings in manuscript and early print sources: *descouvert*, *descovert*, *de-covert*, and anglicized forms all appear.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the only direct coverage among standard shelf sources, offering a minimal but accurate entry: "L. Fr. covered. Kelham. Opened; un-" — the truncated form suggesting an entry that defined the term as the opposite of covert status, with a citation to Kelham's *Norman Dictionary* (1779) as the Law French authority. The brevity of Burrill's treatment is itself informative: by the mid-nineteenth century the term was sufficiently archaic that even a comprehensive law dictionary treated it as little more than a cross-reference placeholder. No substantive doctrinal content is attached to the headword itself.
The term does not appear in Bouvier's Law Dictionary or Black's Law Dictionary in standard editions, confirming that it had passed out of active legal vocabulary well before American legal lexicography reached its mature form. The gap is not an omission — it reflects the term's role as a relic of Law French usage rather than a living term of art.
Jurisdictional Note
The term is specific to the English common law tradition and its early American reception. It has no meaningful counterpart in civil law or Scottish legal systems, which did not adopt the coverture framework in the same form.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: COVERTURE; FEME SOLE; MARRIED WOMEN'S PROPERTY ACTS