When were US women no longer the property of their husbands?

Answer 1

Wives were never their husbands property. The wife's property did become her husband's. But a husband could not sell his wife. Divorce was hard to get so he couldn't even leave her. He was obligated to support her. He had to protect her. He could not kill her. If got a divorce and it was considered his fault (e.g. he committed adultery) he had to support her for the rest of her life.

In Western cultures since the middle ages a dowry, paid by the bride's family to the groom, was more common.

Answer 2

Women had more legal rights in ancient Egypt than in Colonial America.

You have asked a complex question. It's complex because no single law was ever passed at a certain date. A complete answer would involve a comprehensive survey of laws in early America, laws that controlled inheritance and property. There was no single law that stated, "Women are the property of their husbands". She was completely under her husband's control. She became his legal property or chattel. She had no legal existence in her own right. If she earned any wages they belonged to her husband. Property she brought into the marriage could be taken to pay his debts. He could beat her but not cause permanent injury or death.

A woman's place in the colonial world was carved out by ancient legal principals and traditions that evolved over centuries such as:

1. Women were denied a separate legal status from their husbands.
2. A husband and wife were considered one person under the law and that one person was the husband.
3. Women were denied rights of inheritance.
4. Married women were denied the right to own property in their own right.
5. Men could be compensated for the loss of a wife (property) due to another man's negligence.
6. In some societies men paid a bride price to the parents of his wife in the same way he purchased livestock. In others the family paid a man to take their daughter off their hands- a dowry. In either case, the woman was considered her father's property and in bride price societies women had more value.
   

The legal status of women varied in different regions in early America. Single women could inherit and purchase property in many states. However, if she married that property automatically came under her husband's control. In Massachusetts, one can find ancient deeds that explicitly provided the property was to be held exclusively by the woman free from the control of her husband. Those restrictions were apparently followed. Also in Massachusetts, a woman didn't become a legal heir of her husband until around 1904. Before that a man's children inherited his property when he died.

The common laws that formed the legal barriers to women acquiring their own separate legal status fell slowly in various states at various times. By the nineteenth century states began enacting laws that allow a married woman to own property in her own right and to write a will.

Two excellent books on the effect of laws on women's lives in early America:

• Women and the Law of Property in Early America by Marylynn Salmon
• Inheritance in America by Shamas, Salmon and Dahlin