Definition
A married woman, in legal usage, refers to a woman who has entered into a valid marriage and whose legal status, rights, and capacities are thereby affected under applicable law. The significance of this status has changed dramatically over time and varies by jurisdiction, but the term carries substantial historical weight in Anglo-American law.
Historically, the legal identity of a married woman was governed by the doctrine of coverture, under which a woman's legal existence was subsumed into that of her husband upon marriage. She could not, in most circumstances, contract independently, hold separate property, sue or be sued in her own name, or retain wages she earned. This was not a minor procedural limitation — it was a near-total suspension of civil legal personality.
In modern law, the doctrine of coverture has been abolished in all U.S. jurisdictions and throughout the common law world. A married woman today possesses full legal capacity equivalent to any adult: she may own property separately, enter contracts, bring suit, and exercise all civil rights independently of her marital status. The term "married woman" retains legal relevance primarily in:
1. Property law — particularly in jurisdictions with community property regimes, where the marital status of a property owner affects title, creditor rights, and disposition.
2. Descent and distribution — marital status at the time of death affects intestate succession rights and spousal elective shares.
3. Trust law — a married woman may be a settlor, trustee, or beneficiary, and historical trust instruments may contain provisions specifically addressing her capacity or the interaction of trust assets with spousal claims.
4. Evidence — spousal privilege rules may turn on whether a marriage was valid and subsisting at the relevant time.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A woman who is currently married; a wife.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A woman who has a husband living; a wife.
The gap between common and legal meaning here is historical rather than definitional. In ordinary language, "married woman" is a simple status descriptor. In law — particularly in sources predating the Married Women's Property Acts of the nineteenth century — the phrase was a term of art signaling a distinct legal category with severe capacity restrictions. A researcher encountering the phrase in a legal instrument from 1850 is reading something categorically different from the same phrase in a 2020 deed.
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Common Confusion
MARRIED WOMAN vs. FEME COVERT: These terms are closely related but not interchangeable in historical usage. Feme covert is the formal common law term for a married woman under coverture — it emphasizes the legal disability. "Married woman" in modern usage carries no such disability. In older sources, the two terms are often used synonymously, but feme covert specifically signals the incapacity regime. A statute or treatise reference to a "feme covert" should be read with full awareness of coverture's consequences; a modern reference to a "married woman" should not.
MARRIED WOMAN vs. FEME SOLE: A feme sole is an unmarried woman — including a widow or a woman divorced — who possesses full legal capacity. Some jurisdictions historically permitted a married woman to be treated as a feme sole trader for limited commercial purposes. These categories appear frequently in property and probate records and are easily conflated by researchers unfamiliar with the terminology.
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Why It Matters in Research
The doctrinal history of married women's legal status is one of the most significant transformations in Anglo-American private law, and it directly affects how corpus sources must be read.
**Chronological traps**: The Married Women's Property Acts were enacted at different times in different jurisdictions — England's primary act came in 1882; U.S. states legislated sporadically from the 1840s onward. A legal source from 1860 may reflect the pre-reform common law of coverture, post-reform statutory law, or a transitional hybrid, depending on jurisdiction and date. Never assume a nineteenth-century source reflects modern capacity rules.
**Property records**: Deeds, wills, and trust instruments involving married women must be read against the law in force at the time of execution. A conveyance by a married woman without her husband's joinder may have been void under the law then applicable — which has title implications that can persist into modern chain-of-title research.
**Community property jurisdictions**: In the nine U.S. community property states, marital status continues to have substantial legal consequences for property ownership and creditor access. The term "married woman" in a modern California or Texas deed is not a historical artifact — it carries active legal significance.
**Trust drafting**: Historical trust instruments frequently included provisions restricting the ability of a beneficiary's husband to reach her interest — so-called "restraints on anticipation" or "spendthrift" clauses drafted with a married woman's coverture disability in mind. These provisions may appear in instruments still operative today and require careful interpretation against the law of the jurisdiction at the time of drafting.
**Bouvier's cross-references**: Bouvier directs readers from this entry to COMMUNITY, DESCENT AND DISTRIBUTION, and TRUST — a signal that married women's legal status is best understood not in isolation but through its effects on these three bodies of doctrine.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's Law Dictionary addresses the married woman primarily through cross-reference rather than extended definition, directing researchers to COMMUNITY, DESCENT AND DISTRIBUTION, and TRUST. This editorial choice reflects the doctrinal landscape of Bouvier's era: the legal significance of marital status was diffused across property, succession, and equity doctrine rather than collected in a single unified framework.
What Bouvier does not address — because it was still largely current law during the editions most commonly consulted — is the coverture regime in full operational detail. Researchers relying on Bouvier for historical accuracy should supplement with Blackstone's Commentaries (Book I, Chapter 15) and Kent's Commentaries on American Law, both of which describe the common law disabilities of married women at length. These sources make clear that the common law position was not merely restrictive but philosophically grounded in a conception of marital unity that courts and legislators spent the latter half of the nineteenth century systematically dismantling.
Modern legal dictionaries largely treat this term as historical, focusing on its abolition rather than its content. The shift from a term of substantive legal significance to a largely neutral status descriptor is itself a research data point.
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Jurisdictional Note
Community property states (Arizona, California, Idaho, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Washington, Wisconsin) continue to attach significant legal consequences to married status, including for women. In these jurisdictions, the marital status of a property owner at acquisition, during ownership, and at death remains directly relevant to title, taxation, and creditor rights. In common law property states, the married woman's legal status is largely equivalent to any adult's, with the remaining distinctions found in elective share statutes and spousal privilege rules.
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