c. 93) was an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom that allowed married women to be the legal owners of the money they earned and to inherit property.

Before 1870, any money made by a woman (either through a wage, from investment, by gift, or through inheritance) instantly became the property of her husband once she was married, with the exception of a dowry.

Only the extremely wealthy were exempted from these laws – under the rules of equity, a portion of a married woman's property could be set aside in the form of a trust for her use or the use of her children.

[8] She was also an intimate friend of George Eliot (the pen name of Mary Ann Evans), who wrote Middlemarch.

[5][12] Women married thereafter were entitled up to a fairly good sum of property (£200) in their own names ("absolutely") from their next of kin.

The act was not retrospective — all women who married before it could not recover into their sole name the property they had held before marriage (if they had any).

The act's full significance was that, for the first time in British history, it allowed newly married women to forever legally keep their own earnings and inherit property.

The end of coverture certainly ranks along with suffrage as the sine qua non [inception] of public recognition of women's autonomy and personhood".

[12] Women before were not seen as individuals who could have their own vote let alone be elected; their husbands by tradition would take control of such matters.

[citation needed] There was a focus put on the arguments in the home that would arise from this new Act being passed: "The most striking feature of the debates on the Married Women's Property Bills is how little time was spent discussing the principle of sexual equality, and how much time was spent discussing the idea that giving married women property rights would cause discord in the home".

Within the terms of separate spheres ideology, this household harmony could only be achieved by the total subordination of women to their husbands".