Definition
"Ment of dower" does not appear to be a recognized legal term. The source material supplied for this entry — a Bouvier's Law Dictionary entry for *De Ætate Probanda* — contains no definition of "ment of dower," and no such term appears in standard legal dictionaries, historical treatises, or common law doctrine.
The most likely explanations are:
1. **Typographical or OCR error.** The term may be a corrupted rendering of a longer phrase. Candidates include *ADMEASUREMENT OF DOWER* (a common law writ and doctrine governing the quantification of a widow's dower interest when it has been assigned excessively or incorrectly) or *ASSIGNMENT OF DOWER* (the process by which a widow's dower right is formally set off and allocated from the deceased husband's estate). Both are well-attested terms in common law sources, including Bouvier's.
2. **Partial capture.** The leading characters of the term may have been dropped, leaving only a fragment ("ment of dower" from "admeasure-ment of dower" or "assign-ment of dower").
3. **Non-standard or local usage.** If this term appears in a specific historical document or jurisdiction, it may be a variant or abbreviation not in general circulation.
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Common Confusion
This term as presented should not be treated as a confirmed legal term pending verification of the full original text. Researchers should resist building analysis on a fragment. The two most plausible reconstructed terms — admeasurement of dower and assignment of dower — are meaningfully different from each other and should not be conflated.
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Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering "ment of dower" in historical documents, digitized legal texts, or database search results should treat it as a probable fragment and search for the complete term. OCR processing of nineteenth-century legal texts — including Bouvier's and similar reference works — frequently drops or corrupts prefixes, producing truncated terms that can mislead index searches.
If the intended term is **admeasurement of dower**, researchers should note that this writ became obsolete in most American jurisdictions as statutory dower reforms took hold in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and was eventually rendered moot as most states abolished dower entirely. Bouvier's covers admeasurement of dower substantively in its own right.
If the intended term is **assignment of dower**, that concept has substantially more modern relevance and appears across both historical and contemporary property law sources, though its practical scope has narrowed as dower has been abolished in the majority of U.S. states.
The source material actually provided — *De Ætate Probanda* — concerns a distinct and unrelated writ dealing with proof of an heir's age to recover a tenancy held in capite. It has no direct connection to dower, further suggesting a mismatch between the term as entered and the source material retrieved.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's Law Dictionary, the sole source supplied, does not contain an entry for "ment of dower" as such. The entry provided for *De Ætate Probanda* addresses the writ used to summon a jury to determine whether an heir of a tenant in capite had reached full age — a prerequisite to recovering the estate from the Crown's wardship. This is a feudal land law concept related to tenure and wardship, not to dower.
Bouvier's does contain substantive entries for *admeasurement of dower* and *dower* generally, which would be the appropriate anchors for any research into the quantification or assignment of a widow's interest. Those entries should be consulted directly.
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