Wife’s New Status

Ladies' Mirror, Volume 5, Issue 1, 1 July 1926, Page 41

Wife’s New Status

'By A BARRISTER-AT-LAW

Interesting changes— indeed, rather startling—were brought about in England by the coming into operation with the year 1926 of the new 130,000-word Law of Property Act. The ancient customary land law of England vanishes at a touch; the romance of copyhold, gavelkind and Borough English disappears, and the customary heir of property in this or that famous manor will be known no more. The heir-at-law is doomed, for the State has taken on itself to ignore certain blood relationships, which could be done previously only by a testator in the exercise of his right to dispose of his property as he willed. Property which, in the case of intestacy, would have gone to distant relations will now, failing nearer kin, pass to the Crown. In future there will be only two kinds of legal ownership in land—fees simple and leaseholds for years, much in the same way as absolute ownership and the ownership of the hirer are alone recognised as legal ownership in the case of chattels. Copyhold and fancy tenures are abolished and turned into ordinary freehold (the lords of manors re-

ceiving reasonable compensation), and all land will descend on intestacy exactly as stocks, money or goods, but in a new fashion. Husband *And Wife Equal With regard to the devolution of W property on the death of the owner intestate, all property will go in the same way. Personal chattels —furniture and the —go to the surviving husband or wife absolutely, together with the residue up to £IOOO. Subject to that, if there arc no children, or grandchildren, the surviving spouse takes a life interest in the whole, or, if there are children or grandchildren, in onehalf. The residue goes to such of the children living at the death of the intestate as attain 21 or marry, the issue of deceased children taking the share which their parent would have taken. Husband and wife are for the first time placed on an equal footing. The new Act does not penalise the children of a young man who marries under 21. In the new Act the protection given to a person who takes the title deeds as security is not to be infringed at all.