Editing Coverture (section)

=== Abolition ===
This situation continued until the mid-to-late 19th century, when Married Women's Property Acts started to be passed in many English-speaking jurisdictions, setting the stage for further reforms.

In the United States, many states passed [[Married Women's Property Acts in the United States|Married Women's Property Acts]]<ref>[http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/366305/Married-Womens-Property-Acts "Married Women's Property Acts (United States [1839&#93;)"]. ''Encyclopædia Britannica''.</ref> to eliminate or reduce the effects of coverture. Nineteenth-century courts in the United States also enforced state [[privy examination]] laws. A privy examination was an American legal practice in which a married woman who wished to sell her property had to be separately examined by a judge or justice of the peace outside of the presence of her husband and asked if her husband was pressuring her into signing the document. This practice was seen as a means to protect married women's property from overbearing husbands.<ref>[http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_womens_history/v012/12.2braukman.html "Married Women's Property and Male Coercion: United States Courts and the Privy Examination, 1864–1887"]. ''Project MUSE''.</ref> Other states abolished the concept through court cases, for example: California in ''Follansbee v. Benzenberg'' (1954).<ref>{{cite web|url=https://law.justia.com/cases/california/court-of-appeal/2d/122/466.html|title=Follansbee v. Benzenberg}}</ref> The abolition of coverture has been seen as "one of the greatest extensions of property rights in human history", and one that led to a number of positive financial and economic impacts. Specifically, it led to shifts in household portfolios, a positive shock to the supply of credit, and a reallocation of labor towards non-agriculture and capital intensive industries.<ref>Hazan, Moshe; Weiss, David; and Zoabi, Hosny (October 29, 2018). [https://m.tau.ac.il/~davidweiss/WomenRights.pdf "Women's Liberation as a Financial Innovation"]. ''Journal of Finance''.</ref>

As recently as 1972, two US states allowed a wife accused in criminal court to offer as a legal defense that she was obeying her husband's orders.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20100728112409/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,942533,00.html "The Law: Up from Coverture"]. ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]''. March 20, 1972.</ref>