Old legal and record term medieval-1800s
What does coverture mean in an old deed?
Coverture was the common-law rule that a married woman's legal identity merged into her husband's, so she could not normally own, sue, or contract alone. Coverture is why married women vanish from deeds and appear only in dower releases; her separate examination is often the sole record of her consent. You will meet it in deeds and court records, mostly medieval-1800s.
Where it appears: deeds, court records.
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Related terms
Browse the full genealogy records glossary for more occupations, causes of death, and legal terms.
FAQs
Where will I see coverture in the records?+
Mostly in deeds and court records, medieval-1800s. Clerks abbreviated freely and spelling wandered, so expect variant wordings around it.
Do these old terms still matter for family history?+
Yes, a single word can settle a relationship. Relict names a widow, et ux hides an unnamed wife, natural son points at a parent. The words are dry, but what they encode about a family is not.
Where do these definitions come from?+
They are drawn from period dictionaries, government archive glossaries, and standard genealogy references, cross-checked against each other; provenance is documented with the dataset. Inside AncestorIQ, Deep Research reads the record itself and explains terms like this in context, against your ancestor's own document.
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