Dictionary:
dow·er (dou'ər)  |
[Middle English douere, from Old French douaire, from Medieval Latin dōtārium, dōārium, from Latin dōs, dōt-, dowry.]
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Right of a widow to some or all of the property of her deceased husband. Years ago some states recognized a common law dower, giving a widow a fixed portion of the estate; today this right has generally been abolished.
| Real Estate Dictionary: Dower |
Under Common Law the legal right of a wife or child to part of a deceased husband's or father's property. Contrast with Curtesy.
Example: In some states a widow can enforce dower rights to claim part of her deceased husband's Estate regardless of provisions in his will.
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| Columbia Encyclopedia: dower |
| Law Encyclopedia: Dower |
The provision that the law makes for a widow out of the lands or tenements of her husband, for her support and the nurture of her children. A species of life estate that a woman is, by law, entitled to claim on the death of her husband, in the lands and tenements of which he was seised in fee during the marriage, and which her issue, if any, might by possibility have inherited. The life estate to which every married woman is entitled on the death of her husband, intestate, or, in case she dissents from his will, one-third in value of all lands of which her husband was beneficially seized in law or in fact, at any time during coverture.
The real property must be inheritable by the wife's offspring in order for her to claim dower. Even if, however, their marriage produces no offspring, the wife is entitled to dower as long as any such progeny of her husband would qualify as his heirs at the time of his death.
Prior to the death of the husband, the interest of the wife is called an inchoate right of dower, in the sense that it is a claim that is not a present interest but one that might ripen into a legally enforceable right if not prohibited or divested. It is frequently stated that an inchoate right of dower is a mere expectancy and not an estate. The law governing dower rights is the law in existence at the time of the husband's death and not the law existing at the time of the marriage.
The courts, however, protect the inchoate right of dower from a fraudulent conveyance — a transfer of property made to defraud, delay, or hinder a creditor, or in this case, the wife, or to place such property beyond the creditor's reach — by the husband in contemplation of, or subsequent to, the marriage. Protection is also available against the claims of creditors if the claims arose after the marriage. The posting of security can be required to protect the interest if oil, gas, or other substances are removed from the land, which thereby results in a depreciation — a reduction of worth — with respect to the value of the estate. Decisions supporting a contrary view take the position that a wife cannot interfere with her husband's complete enjoyment of the land during his lifetime.
A wife can relinquish her inchoate right of dower by an antenuptial agreement — which is a contract entered into by the prospective spouses prior to the marriage that resolves issues of support, division of property, and distribution of wealth in the event of death, separation, or divorce — or by a release, that is, the relinquishment of a right, claim, or privilege.
The claim of dower is based upon proof of a legally recognized marriage, as distinguished from a good faith marriage or a de facto marriage — one in which the parties live together as husband and wife but that is invalid for certain reasons, such as defects in form. A voidable marriage, one that is valid when entered into and which remains valid until either party obtains a lawful court order dissolving the marital relationship, suffices for this purpose if it is not rendered void — of no legal force or binding effect — before the right to the dower arises.
Most states have varied the dower provisions. The fraction of the estate has frequently been increased from one-third to one-half. The property affected has been expanded from realty only to both realty and personalty. The time of ownership has sometimes been changed from "owned during marriage" to "owned at death." The type of interest given to the surviving spouse has been expanded from a life estate to outright ownership of property.
In many states, a widow is entitled to a statutory share in her husband's estate. This is often called an elective share because the surviving spouse can choose to accept the provisions made for her in the decedent's will or accept the share of the property specified by law of descent and distribution or the particular law governing the elective share. In many jurisdictions, dower has been abolished and replaced by the elective share. In others, statutes expressly provide that a spouse choose among the elective share, the dower, or the provisions of the will.
Common law prescribes that an absolute divorce will bar a claim of dower. A legal separation— sometimes labeled a divorce from bed and board, a mensa et thoro — does not end the marital relationship. Unless there is an express statute, such a divorce will not defeat a claim of dower. This is also true with respect to an interlocutory decree of divorce, an interim or temporary court order.
In some states, statutes provide that dower can be denied upon proof of particular types of misconduct, such as adultery, which is voluntary sexual intercourse of a married person with a person other than his or her spouse. Statutes in several states preserve dower if a divorce or legal separation is obtained due to the fault of the other spouse.
In many states, statutes provide that a murderer is not entitled to property rights in the estate of the victim upon the principle that a person must not be allowed to profit from personal wrong. Following this theory, a constructive trust will be declared in favor of the heirs or devisees of the deceased spouse.
See: premarital agreement.
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Dower or morning gift (Latin doarium, or Latinized Germanic morganaticum; Fr. douaire, German Morgengabe [Morgen, "morning," + Gabe, "gift"]) was a provision accorded by law to a wife for her support in the event that she should survive her husband (i.e., become a widow). It was settled on the bride by agreement at the time of the wedding, or provided by law. ("Settled" here refers to a gift into trust.)
The term "morning gift" derives from the Germanic practice of the bridegroom's officially granting the gift on the morning after the wedding night; making such a settlement was evidence that the marriage had been consummated and the bride had proven to be a virgin. However, in popular parlance, the term may be used for a life interest in property settled by a husband on his wife at any time, not just at the wedding. The verb is to dower (dower, dowers, dowered).
In popular usage, the term dower may be confused with:
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Being for the widow and being accorded by law, dower differs essentially from a conventional marriage portion such as the dos of the old Roman law, the French dot, or the English dowry.
The bride received a right to certain property from the bridegroom or his family. It was intended to ensure her livelihood in widowhood, and it was to be kept separate and in the wife's possession.
Dower is the gift given by the groom to the bride, customarily on the morning after the wedding (hence morning gift, though all dowerings from the man to his fiancée, either during the betrothal period, or wedding, or afterwards, even as late as in the testamentary dowering, are understood as dowers if specifically intended for the maintenance of the widow).
Dower has been a property arrangement for marriage used apparently first in early medieval German cultures (such as Langobards and Goths), and the church drove its adoption into other countries, in order to improve the wife's security by this additional benefit.
The practice of dower was prevalent in the Germanic-descending and Scandinavic-descending parts of Europe, such as Sweden, Germany, Normandy and successor states of the Langobardian kingdom.
The husband was legally prevented from using the wife's dower — as contrasted with her dowry, which was brought to the marriage by the bride and used by both spouses. This often meant that the woman's legal representative, usually a male relative, became guardian or executor of the dower, to ensure that it was not squandered.
Usually, the wife was free from kin limitations to use (and bequeath) her dower to whatever and whomever she pleased. It may have become the property of her next marriage, been given to an ecclesiastical institution, or been inherited by her children from other relationships than that from which she received it.
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The Code of Hammurabi from ancient Babylon prescribed what the widow was entitled to from her husband's estate. This included both the value of her dowry and whatever her husband deeded to her. It is one of the earliest surviving legal documents.
Dower is thought to have been suggested by the marriage gift which Tacitus found to be usual among the Germans. This gift he terms dos, but contrasts it with the dos of the Roman law, which was a gift on the part of the wife to the husband, while in Germany the gift was made by the husband to the wife.[1] There was indeed in the Roman law what was termed donatio propter nuptias, a gift from the family of the husband, but this was only required if the dos were brought on the part of the wife. So too in the special instance of a widow (herself poor and undotated) of a husband rich at the time of his death, an ordinance of the Christian Emperor Justinian secured her the right to a part of her husband's property, of which no disposition of his could deprive her.
The general establishment of the principle of dower in the customary law of Western Europe, according to Maine,[2] is to be traced to the influence of the Church, and to be included perhaps among its most arduous triumphs. Dower is an outcome of the ecclesiastical practice of exacting from the husband at marriage a promise to endow his wife, a promise retained in form even now in the marriage ritual of the
There is judicial authority of the year 1310 for the proposition that dower was favoured by law,[5] and at a less remote period it was said to be with life and liberty one of three things which "the law favoreth". In England in the late 18th century, it became common for men to hold land with a trust that prevented their wives' acquiring dower. Accordingly the English statute, the Fines and Recoveries Act of 1833 was passed to impair the inviolability of dower by empowering husbands to cut off by deed or will their wives from dower. Wives married before the Act still had (in certain cases) to acknowledge the deed before a commissioner to bar their right to dower in property which their husband sold. This was simpler than the previous procedure, which had required a fine to be levied in the Court of Common Pleas, a fictitious proceeding, by which she and her husband formally remitted their right to the property to the purchaser.
In English law, dower was one third. However, in the early modern period, it was common for a wife to bar her right to dower in advance under a marriage settlement, under which she agreed to take instead a jointure, that is a particular interest in her husband's property, either a particular share, or a life interest in a particular part of the land, or an annuity. This was often part of an arrangement by which she gave up her property to her husband in exchange for her jointure, which would accordingly be greater than a third. Strictly dower was only available from land that her husband owned, but a life tenant under a settlement was often given power to appoint a jointure for his wife. The wife would retain her right to dower (if not barred by a settlement) even if her husband sold the property; however this right could also be barred by a fictitious court proceeding known as levying a fine. The widow of a copyholder was usually provided for by the custom of the manor with freebench, an equivalent right to dower, but often (but not necessarily) a half, rather than a third.
Under Scots law, the part of the estate that cannot be denied to a surviving wife is referred to as jus relictae.
It was the law of dower unimpaired by statute, which according to the American commentator Chancellor Kent has been "with some modifications everywhere adopted as part of the municipal jurisprudence of the United States".[6] But while the marriage portion, dot, is, yet dower is not, known to the law of Louisiana, and it has now been expressly abolished in some other States and in some territories. The instances of legislative modifications are numerous and important.
During the pre-Reformation period, a man who became a monk and made his religious profession in England was deemed civilly dead, "dead in law" ;[7] consequently his heirs inherited his land forthwith as though he had died a natural death. Assignment of dower in his hand would nevertheless be postponed until the natural death of such a man, for only by his wife's consent could a married man be legally professed in religion, and she was not allowed by her consent to exchange her husband for dower. After the Reformation and the enactment of the English statute of 11 and 12 William III, prohibiting "papists" from inheriting or purchasing lands, a Roman Catholic widow was not held to be debarred of dower, for dower accruing by operation of law was deemed to be not within the prohibitions of the statute. By a curious disability of old English law a Jewish widow born in England would be debarred of dower in land which her husband, he having been an Englishman of the same faith and becoming converted after marriage, should purchase, if she herself remained unconverted.
Of dower (douaire) as it existed in the old French law no trace is to be found in the existing law of France. But brought to Canada from the mother country in pre-Revolutionary times, customary dower accruing by operation of law is yet recognized in the law of the former French province of Quebec. The civil death which by English law seems to have applied to men only, might be by the French law incurred by women taking perpetual religious vows. Therefore, a widow entering into religion would lose her dower, although in some regions she was allowed to retain a moderate income.[8] And now by the law of Quebec a widow joining certain religious orders of the province is deemed civilly dead and undoubtedly would suffer loss of dower.
Some well-born persons have been prone to marry an ineligible spouse. Particularly in European countries where the equal birth of spouses (Ebenbürtigkeit) was an important condition to marriages of dynasts of reigning houses and high nobility, the old matrimonial and contractual law provision of dowering was taken into a new use by institutionalizing the morganatic marriage. Marriage being morganatical prevents the passage of the husband's titles and privileges to the wife and any children born of the marriage.
Morganatic, from the Latin phrase matrimonium ad morganaticam, refers to the dower (Latin: morganaticum, German: Morgengab, Swedish: morgongåva ). When a marriage contract is made that the bride and the children of the marriage will not receive anything else (than the dower) from the bridegroom or from his inheritance or patrimony or from his clan, that sort of marriage was dubbed as "marriage with only the dower and no other inheritance", i.e. matrimonium ad morganaticum.
Neither the bride nor any children of the marriage has any right on the groom's titles, rights, or entailed property. The children are considered legitimate on other counts and the prohibition of bigamy applies.
The practice of "only-doweried" is close to pre-nuptial contracts excluding the spouse from property, though children are usually not affected by prenuptials, whereas they certainly were by morganatical marriage.
Morganatic marriage contained an agreement that the wife and the children born of the marriage will not receive anything further than what was agreed in pre-nuptials, and in some cases may have been zero, or something nominal. Separate nobility titles were given to morganatic wives of dynasts of reigning houses, but it sometimes included no true property. This sort of dower was far from the original purpose of the bride receiving a settled property from the bridegroom's clan, in order to ensure her livelihood in widowhood.
The practice of morganatic marriage was most common in historical German states, where equality of birth between the spouses was considered an important principle among the reigning houses and high nobility. Morganatic marriage has not been and is not possible in jurisdictions that do not allow sufficient freedom of contracting, as it is an agreement containing that pre-emptive limitation to the inheritance and property rights of the wife and the children. Marriages have never been considered morganatic in any part of the United Kingdom.
A settlement from the groom to the bride is an essential part of current traditional Muslim marriages: a man must pay mahr to his bride. It is considered a gift which she has to agree on. The dower can be any value as long as it is agreed upon by both parties. When the groom gives his bride the dower, it becomes her property. In case of a divorce, she won't have to give up her dower unless she is the one who requested the divorce. In the latter case, her husband may ask her to return the dower to him. However, if she has requested the divorce due to her suffering any form of abuse, or has other acceptable reasons for a divorce in Islamic laws (such as her husband suffering from illness or being impotent, etc.), the current judge often will not ask her to give the dower back to her husband.
The amount promised or paid to the bride forms part of her personal property and is of assistance to her in times of financial need, such as a divorce or desertion by the husband. While the Mahr is usually in the form of cash, it may also be a house or viable business that is put in her name and can be run and owned entirely by her if she so chooses.
According to the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, the Bahá'í Faith's most holy book, the dower is paid from the groom to the bride. The dower, if the husband lives in a city, is nineteen mithqáls (approx. 2.2 troy ounces) of pure gold, or, if the husband lives outside a city, the same amount in silver.
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| Translations: Dower |
Dansk (Danish)
n. - talent, enkelod, nydelsesret, medgift
v. tr. - give medgift, skænke talent
Nederlands (Dutch)
weduwgift, bruidsschat, aangeboren talent, een bruidsschat geven aan
Français (French)
n. - douaire
v. tr. - assigner en douaire, doter
Deutsch (German)
n. - der Witwe zustehender Besitz, Mitgift, Begabung
v. - eine Begabung verleihen
Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - (νομ.) επικαρπία χήρας επί της ακίνητης περιουσίας του συζύγου, (μτφ.) προίκισμα, φυσικό χάρισμα, ταλέντο
v. - προικοδοτώ, προικίζω
Italiano (Italian)
dote, assegnare una dote, dotare
Português (Portuguese)
n. - dote (m), parte (f) dos bens em usufruto
v. - favorecer
Русский (Russian)
приданое, дар, давать приданое, одаривать
Español (Spanish)
n. - propiedad vitalicia de la viuda en los bienes inmuebles del marido
v. tr. - dotar a la viuda con propiedad vitalicia
Svenska (Swedish)
n. - hemgift
v. - ge hemgift åt
中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
亡夫遗产, 天赋, 嫁妆, 天资, 给...亡夫遗产, 赋予, 给...嫁妆
中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 亡夫遺產, 天賦, 嫁妝, 天資
v. tr. - 給...亡夫遺產, 賦予, 給...嫁妝
한국어 (Korean)
n. - 과부재산, 타고난 재능
v. tr. - 과부재산을 주다, (자질을) 주다
日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 寡婦産, 天賦の才能
v. - 寡婦産を与える, 寡婦産として与える, 才能を与える
العربيه (Arabic)
(الاسم) نصيب الأرمله كعقار من إرث زوجها تحكم به المحكمه لها طيله فترة حياتها, المهر ( يدفع للفتاة عند زواجها) (فعل) يدفع مهرا, يزود الأرمله بعقارات من إرث زوجها بحكم من المحكمه لها طيله فترة حياتها
עברית (Hebrew)
n. - נכסי האלמנה, נכסי מלוג, מתת-אל, נדוניה, כישרון טבעי
v. tr. - נתן נדוניה, חנן בכישרון
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