Until shockingly recently, married women didn't legally exist in America—and remnants of that law still affect your life today.

The legal doctrine was called "coverture."

Under coverture, which the United States inherited from English common law, a woman had no independent legal identity.

At birth, a female baby existed only under her father's legal identity. When she married, her legal personhood transferred to her husband. She was "feme covert"—a covered woman, her identity completely subsumed.

The husband and wife became one person in the eyes of the law.

And that one person was the husband.

This wasn't metaphorical. It was absolute legal reality with devastating consequences.

Because married women didn't legally exist, they couldn't:

Own property

Sign contracts

Operate businesses

Sue or be sued

Keep their own wages

Make wills

Serve on juries

A married woman owned nothing. Not her clothes. Not her jewelry. Not money she earned. Not inheritance from her parents. Everything belonged to her husband by law.

If she worked and earned wages, her husband owned them. If she inherited wealth, it became his property the moment she married.

She had no legal rights to her children. If she left her husband—for any reason, including abuse—she would never see her children again. They were his property, not hers.

She had no rights to her own body.

A husband had absolute right to sexual access to his wife. Her consent was legally assumed upon marriage and could not be withdrawn. Under coverture, marital rape was a logical impossibility—you cannot rape someone who has no legal right to refuse.

A husband's control of his wife stopped just short of death. He couldn't kill her. But he could beat her. "Moderate correction" was his legal right. Some judges helpfully specified that the implement used for beating shouldn't be thicker than a man's thumb—the origin of "rule of thumb."

A married woman could be beaten, raped, robbed of her wages and inheritance, and deprived of her children, all within the law.

Because she wasn't legally a person.

This wasn't ancient history. This was American law.

So when did it end?

The short answer: it hasn't. Not completely.

Coverture began eroding in the mid-1800s with Married Women's Property Acts, which allowed married women to own property in some circumstances. By the early 1900s, most states had reformed the most extreme provisions.

But full legal personhood for married women came much, much later than most people realize.

Married women weren't regularly allowed to serve on juries until the 1960s and 1970s. Some states excluded them entirely; others made jury service optional for women, assuming their primary duty was domestic.

Women couldn't get credit cards in their own names until 1974—banks required a male co-signer.

Marital rape wasn't illegal in all 50 states until 1993. Yes, 1993. Within many of your lifetimes, a man could legally rape his wife in several American states.

The Supreme Court didn't strike down laws allowing husbands to control their wives' ability to get contraception until 1972.

And coverture's ghost still lingers today.

When you buy real estate as a married woman, you may encounter coverture remnants—some states still have archaic requirements about spousal consent that don't apply equally to husbands.

Tax law contains coverture echoes—the assumption that married couples file jointly, with complex penalties for those who don't.

Employment law, benefits administration, healthcare decisions—coverture's framework shaped all of these, and its shadow remains.

The automatic assumption that a woman takes her husband's last name? That's coverture. It was never required by law—it was a symbol of legal non-existence that became so normalized it feels like tradition.

Even the phrase "head of household" on forms—that's coverture language, the assumption that one person (the husband) represents the family legally.

Think about what this means: for the majority of American history, half the population didn't legally exist as independent persons once they married.

Their labor, their bodies, their children, their property—all belonged to their husbands.

And this wasn't fringe law. It was mainstream, accepted, considered natural and proper. It was how marriage worked.

When suffragettes fought for women's right to vote, they were fighting against a legal system that said married women weren't independent persons capable of holding political opinions separate from their husbands.

When women fought for the right to own property, to control their own wages, to have legal custody of their children, they were fighting against centuries of legal doctrine that said women were non-persons.

Every right women have today was fought for explicitly, one by one, chipping away at coverture piece by piece.

The right to own property. The right to your wages. The right to your children. The right to refuse sex within marriage. The right to make contracts. The right to have credit in your own name. The right to be a legal person.

None of these were granted. All were won.

And some were won incredibly recently.

If you're a woman born before 1974, you were born into a country where married women couldn't get credit cards without male permission.

If you were born before 1993, you were born into a country where marital rape was still legal in some states.

The legal non-existence of married women isn't ancient history. It's your grandmother's life. It's your mother's life. For some of you, it's your own life.

Coverture explains so much about why gender inequality persists. When the law said women weren't persons for centuries, and that only changed within living memory, is it surprising that social attitudes lag behind?

When married women couldn't own businesses for most of American history, is it surprising women are still underrepresented in business ownership?

When women couldn't control their own wages until relatively recently, is it surprising wage gaps persist?

When marital rape was legal until 1993, is it surprising we still struggle with consent culture?

Coverture's ghost haunts us. It shapes our laws, our institutions, our assumptions about marriage, family, and gender roles.

We live in its shadow even though most people don't know what it was called or how recently it ended.

From legal non-existence to partial personhood to gradual equality, the erosion of coverture is the story of women fighting for recognition as human beings under the law.

And that fight isn't finished. Because coverture was never formally abolished—it was just gradually undermined, one law at a time, one court case at a time, one right at a time.

Its remnants remain embedded in legal systems, social expectations, and institutional practices.

The next time you encounter a form asking for "head of household," or a bank requiring spousal signatures, or a social expectation that married women change their names—you're encountering coverture.

The ghost of the law that said women weren't persons.

It's fainter now. But it's still there.

And recognizing it is the first step to finally putting it to rest.

Sources & Further Reading
– Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England
– U.S. Supreme Court cases on marital rights
– Married Women’s Property Acts (19th Century)