Over the 1800s economic growth, greater geographical mobility, and the beginnings of the industrial revolution rendered both family life and people’s livelihoods less stable. Legislators gradually introduced reforms to better fit the law to a capitalist economy based on movable wealth and to protect women and children from men’s more frequent bankruptcies.

States began to pass married women’s property acts, which gave wives similar legal rights as single women with regard to their estates and wages. But this was piecemeal legislation, with different laws in different states. One of the first signs of this trend was a law enacted by Connecticut in 1809, which allowed women to write wills. The first broader married women’s property act was passed by Mississippi in 1839, while the national model became New York’s law of 1848 (see below).

By the later nineteenth century most states had adopted such laws, though a few (Delaware, Virginia, and South Carolina) waited until the end of the century to do so. Even after such laws were passed, however, they were not always applied fairly, and the new laws often coexisted with elements of the earlier system.

 New York’s Married Women’s Property Act, 1848

AN ACT for the effectual protection of the property of married women, passed April 7, 1848. The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and Assembly do enact as follows:

[1] The real and personal property of any female who may hereafter marry, and which she shall own at the time of marriage, and the rents issues and profits thereof shall not be subject to the disposal of her husband, nor be liable for his debts, and shall continue her sole and separate property, as if she were a single female.

[2] The real and personal property, and the rents issues and profits thereof of any female now married shall not be subject to the disposal of her husband; but shall be her sole and separate property as if she were a single female except so far as the same may be liable for the debts of her husband heretofore contracted.

[3] It shall be lawful for any married female to receive, by gift, grant devise or bequest, from any person other than her husband and hold to her sole and separate use, as if she were a single female, real and personal property, and the rents, issues and profits thereof, and the same shall not be subject to the disposal of her husband, nor be liable for his debts.

[4] All contracts made between persons in contemplation of marriage shall remain in full force after such marriage takes place.

Source: the Library of Congress, under American Women, State Law Resources: Married Women’s Property Laws (with additional information and sources).