Under coverture (an English common law system), married women could not own property, control their wages, enter into contracts, and otherwise act autonomously, to their husband's authority.
Over several decades, beginning in 1839, statutes that enabled women to control real and personal property, enter into contracts and lawsuits, inherit independently of their husbands, work for a salary, and write wills were enacted.
[7] It was enacted after a successful case by a Chickasaw woman, Betsy Love Allen, prevented a creditor of her husband from seizing her separately owned slaves.
[10] Usually, concerns for family integrity and protecting a household from economic crisis, rather than a liberal conception of the role of women in society, motivated these changes.
As late as 1867 a decision of the Supreme Court of Illinois in Cole v. Van Riper noted that "It is simply impossible that a married woman should be able to control and enjoy her property as if she were sole, without practically leaving her at liberty to annul the marriage.
It was the most expansive legislation of any enacted in the South and allowed a married woman to enter into certain contracts, write a will, and sue for divorce.
[16] Midwestern states that enacted legislation included Michigan in 1844, which covered both real and personal property obtained by a woman before or during her marriage.
(Iowa became a state in 1846)[15] In 1845, New York granted a married woman who secured "a patent for her own invention" the right to hold it and retain all earnings from it "as if unmarried".
It allowed married women to own and sell real and personal property, control their earnings, to sue and to make wills.
[22] The original state constitutions of Kansas (1859), Oregon (1857), and Nevada (1864) guaranteed the right of women to own property without respect to marital status.
[17] In 1849, the Tennessee legislature stated, in one historian's account, "that married women lack independent souls and thus should not be allowed to own property.
[21] Three states gave married women no legal status until late in the nineteenth century: Delaware, South Carolina, and Virginia.
[1] For a short time between 1914 and 1920, courts began to relax their interpretations and allow suits for torts such as assault and intentional infliction of venereal disease.
[1] However, the next two decades saw regression in this trend with the vast majority of courts choosing not to recognize either intentional or negligent tort suits between spouses.
The fear of collusion and insurance fraud that also led to guest statutes are more likely the reason behind courts disallowing interspousal tort suits than the patriarchy.