FEME SOLE - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

FEME SOLEAuthored

The Law Mind • 1189 words

Definition

A feme sole (from the Law French, literally "sole woman") is a woman who is legally single and therefore capable of contracting, suing, and holding property in her own name. The category encompasses:

1. A woman who has never married.
2. A widow whose husband has died.
3. A divorced woman whose marriage has been legally dissolved.
4. For most legal purposes, a woman who has been judicially separated from her husband — though this last category carried significant qualifications in historical practice.

The term's legal force derives from what it is not: a feme covert, the status of a married woman whose legal identity was subsumed into her husband's under the common law doctrine of coverture. A feme sole could own property, enter contracts, bring and defend lawsuits, and be held personally liable — rights that marriage extinguished or severely curtailed under coverture. The classification is therefore less a description of domestic status than a statement about legal capacity.

Common Language

Wiktionary: "A single woman, whether unmarried, spinster, widow or divorcee."

The common usage tracks the legal definition closely enough that the terms nearly coincide — but the gap that matters is functional, not taxonomic. In ordinary speech, "single woman" is a social description. In law, feme sole was a capacity classification that determined whether a woman could be a party to a contract, hold title to real property, or appear in court without her husband's involvement. The social and legal categories overlapped but were not identical: a judicially separated woman might remain socially "married" while acquiring feme sole status for commercial purposes, and a married woman trading independently under London custom could be treated as a feme sole trader without being legally single at all.

Recognized Forms

/SUBTYPES

Feme sole trader (also feme sole merchant): A married woman who, by the custom of London and certain other jurisdictions, traded independently on her own account, separate from her husband. With respect to her commercial dealings, she was treated as a feme sole — able to contract, sue, and be sued — without her marriage being dissolved. Burrill notes that the term was also applied to women deserted by their husbands who continued to trade on their own behalf. This is a commercially significant subtype: it created a zone of legal capacity within an otherwise coverture-governed marriage, and it operated by local custom rather than general common law.

Why It Matters in Research

Feme sole is not merely a historical curiosity — it is a research navigation problem. The term appears throughout equity pleadings, property records, probate filings, and commercial cases in English and American materials from the seventeenth century through the late nineteenth century, and its meaning shifts depending on context and jurisdiction.

The first trap is assuming that all feme sole references mean the same thing. A feme sole in a conveyancing instrument means something different from a feme sole trader in a commercial dispute, and a judicially separated wife occupies a legally intermediate position that some sources treat as full feme sole status and others qualify significantly. Read the surrounding context carefully before treating any feme sole reference as a straightforward capacity determination.

The second trap is anachronism. American married women's property acts — beginning with New York in 1848 and spreading across states through the 1870s and beyond — progressively dismantled coverture and extended feme sole-like capacity to married women. Once those statutes took effect, feme sole as a formal legal category became less operationally necessary, though courts continued to use the terminology in opinions well into the twentieth century. A case citing a woman's feme sole status in 1890 may be interpreting a married women's property act, not traditional common law coverture doctrine. The older terminology survived the doctrine it originally described.

The third trap involves jurisdictional variation in the feme sole trader doctrine. London custom was not universal, and American courts were inconsistent about whether and how to recognize married women's independent trading capacity before statutory reform arrived. Sources that describe feme sole trader status as settled law may be describing English custom, not American practice.

In the Law Mind corpus, feme sole appears most heavily in equity, property, and domestic relations materials. Researchers working in early American case law should expect feme sole references to sit alongside coverture analysis; researchers in later nineteenth-century materials should cross-check against applicable married women's property statutes in the relevant jurisdiction.

Historical Dictionary Support

The four source dictionaries converge on the core definition without meaningful disagreement. Black's and Bouvier's offer nearly identical language — a single woman including widows, divorcees, and judicially separated wives — and both cite Mozley & Whiteley's dictionary and Stephen's Commentaries as authority, suggesting the definition was well settled in the treatise tradition by the time these dictionaries were compiled.

Burrill adds the most substantively useful material by including the feme sole trader subtype with citation to Jacob's Law Dictionary and Burrows's Reports, grounding the commercial variation in English authority. Burrill also flags the desertion application — that a wife abandoned by her husband might be treated as a feme sole trader — which is the kind of marginal case other dictionaries omit.

Rapalje & Lawrence does not appear to have a relevant feme sole entry in the excerpts provided; the material supplied relates to an unrelated felony entry.

What the historical dictionaries largely omit is any treatment of the transition away from coverture doctrine. They define feme sole against the backdrop of coverture as a stable system, without acknowledging that the married women's property acts were actively eroding the practical stakes of the feme/feme covert distinction during the very period these dictionaries were in use. Researchers should not read these entries as describing a static doctrine — by the late nineteenth century, the feme sole category was losing its operative force even as the terminology persisted.

Jurisdictional Note

Feme sole status under traditional common law was uniform in conception but variable in consequence depending on whether a given jurisdiction recognized the feme sole trader custom and, more importantly, when and how it enacted married women's property legislation. American states varied significantly in timing and scope; Mississippi acted as early as 1839, while other states lagged by decades. The jurisdictional question for researchers is not what feme sole meant, but what legal consequences flowed from that status in a particular state at a particular time.

FEME SOLEmain

Black's Law Dictionary • 1891

to any other punishment prescribed by law; as distinguished from a "misdemeanor,' upon conviction for which no forfeiture fol- lowed. All indictable offenses are either felonies or misdemeanors, but a material part of the distinction is taken away by St. 33 & 34 Vict. c. 23, which abolishes forfeit- ure for felony. Wharton. In American law. The term has no very definite or precise meaning, except in some cases where it is defined by statute. For the most part, the state laws, in describing any particular offense, declare whether or not it shall be considered a felony. Apart from this, the word seems merely to imply a crime of a graver or more atrocious nature than those designated as "misdemeanors." The statutes or codes of several of the states define felony as any public offense on conviction of which the offender is liable to be sentenced to death or to imprisonment in a penitentiary or state prison. Pub. St. Mass. 1882, p. 1290; Code Ala. 1886, § 3701; Code Ga. 1882, § 3404; 34 Ohio St. 301; 1 Wis. 188; 2 Rev. St. N. Y. p. 587, § 30; 1 Park. Crim. R. 39. In feudal law. An act or offense on the part of the vassal, which cost him his fee, or in consequence of which his fee fell into G the hands of his lord; that is, became for- feited. (See FELONIA.) Perfidy, ingrati- tude, or disloyalty to a lord.

FEME SOLEmain

Black's Law Dictionary • 1891

A single woman, includ- ing those who have been married, but whose marriage has been dissolved by death or di- vorce, and, for most purposes, those women who are judicially separated from their hus- K L M

FEME SOLEmain

Rapalje & Lawrence • 1888

(507) FELONIOUSLY, (equivalent to "with intent to commit felony"). 8 Heisk. (Tenn.) 260. (in a declaration). 3 Wils. 318. (in an indictment). 2 Dall. (U. S.) 228; 7 Blackf. (Ind.) 186; 12 Minn. 293; 68 Ind. 423; 2 Mass. 409; 127 Id. 15. (when necessary in an indictment). 24 Mo. 380; 25 Id. 324; 68 N. C. 211; Bish. Stat. Cr. & 387. (when not necessary in an indictment). 11 Serg. & R. (Pa.) 177. (synonymous with "purposely"). 17 seven years, or imprisonment for two years, with or without hard labor, whipping and solitary confinement. (Stat. 7 and 8 Geo. IV. с. 28; Russ. Cr. 65, 186. See RECOGNIZANCE.) In America each separate offence has its appropriate punishment provided by the statute creating it. A felon is also in general incapacitated from holding certain offices (Stat. 33 and 34 Vict. c. 23), and in some jurisdictions from becoming a witness. As to the other consequences and peculiarities of felony, see Steph. Cr. Dig. 8; Harris Cr. L. 10. 23. Species of felony. - Felony, AWAY, (in a warrant of a magistrate). 6 Dowl. strictly speaking, includes treason (q. v.), FELONIOUSLY, UNLAWFULLY AND MALIalthough the terms are generally used as CIOUSLY, (in an indictment). 1 Chand. (Wis.) opposed to each other. Instances of Ind. 307. FELONIOUSLY AND UNLAWFULLY, (in an indictment). 34 N. H. 510, 515. FELONIOUSLY DID STEAL, (in an indictment). 41 Tex. 226. FELONIOUSLY STOLEN, TAKEN AND CARRIED & Ry. 8. 166. FELONIOUSLY, VOLUNTARILY AND MALICIOUSLY, (in an indictment for arson). 4 Car. & P. 245. FELONIOUSLY, WILFULLY AND MALICIOUSLY, (in an indictment). 2 Stark. Ev. 66. FELONIOUSLY, WILFULLY AND OF HER MALICE AFORETHOUGHT, (in an indictment.) 3 Car. & P. 414. FELONIOUSLY, WILFULLY, MALICIOUSLY AND UNLAWFULLY, (in an indictment). 2 Marsh. 466. FELONY.-OLD FRENCH: felun, felon, from Low Latin, felo, a vassal guilty of disobedience or breach of fidelity towards his lord. The ultimate derivation is unknown. See the various conjectures in Litt. 8. v. and 4 Bl. Com. 95. felony, in the more usual sense of the word, are: piracy, murder, manslaughter, rape, larceny, robbery, burglary, arson, some kinds of assault, and certain acts resembling treason. Steph. Cr. Dig. 36. See MISDEMEANOR. FELONY, (defined). 8 Blackf. (Ind.) 489; 10 Mich. 169; 3 Duer (N. Y.) 373, 387; 23 Ν. Υ. 252, 257; 18 Tex. 387,389; 17 Am. Dec. 791 n.; 1 Dak. T. 5, 7; 4 Bl. Com. 94, 95; 1 Chit. Gen. Pr. 14. (what constitutes). 4 Mass. 580; 1 Park. (N. Y.) Cr. 39; 2 Id. 685; 14 Wend. (N. Ү.) 31; 4 Bac. Abr. 173. 245, 249; N. Y. 21. (what is not). 4 Mass. 439; 7 Id. 22 N. Y. 317. (in New York revised statutes). 41 (indictment for). 41 Miss. 570. - An unmarried woman, whether a spinster or a widow. Also, any woman who, although married, 22. Punishment. -Felony is punishable in various modes, as by death or imprisonment, and, in England, by penal servitude, many felonies having special punishments attached to them. (See the titles dealing with the varieties of felony mentioned infra, & 3.) Where no punish-is in matters of property independent of ment is specially provided, felony is punher husband, is a feme sole quoad such ishable in England by penal servitude for property, and may deal with it in every

feme solenoun

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

Wiktionary contributors • CC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
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A single woman, whether unmarried, spinster, widow or divorcee.

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