Courtesy tenure (or curtesy/courtesy of England) is the legal term denoting the life interest which a widower (i.e. former husband) may claim in the lands of his deceased wife, under certain conditions.
The tenure relates only to those lands of which his wife was in her lifetime actually seised (or sasined in Scots law) and not therefore to an estate of inheritance.
The historian K. E. Digby states it to be connected with curia, having reference either to the attendance of the husband as tenant of the lands at the lord's court, or to mean simply that the husband is acknowledged tenant by the courts of England.
[1] The Married Women's Property Act 1882 did not affect the right of courtesy so far as relating to the wife's undisposed-of realty, and the Settled Land Act 1884, section 8, provided that for the purposes of the Settled Land Act 1882 the estate of a tenant by courtesy is to be deemed an estate arising under a settlement made by the wife.
The right of Terce (being the equivalent claim by a wife on her husband's estate) was also abolished by the same provision to undisputably grant marriage equality.