Hey, all you lawyers. Remember that concept called "dower?" It's when a wife has, under law, a claim to . . . some kind of property thing. You know, that.
I recently ran into this term again when my partner, Jason, showed me a copy of a property sale contract from 1848 that pertains (appertains?) to a house we are in the process of buying in the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts.
The original owner of the tract sold it in 1848 for fifty-nine dollars to someone else, and the owner's wife explicitly gave up her right to dower in the contract. "What drama was behind that agreement?" I wondered, but then became distracted by the extremely fine handwriting of the clerk of court of that time. He really packed a lot of longitudes and appurtenances in a tiny space.
It's fun to buy property in a place like Massachusetts that has the advantage of being (1) super-historical and (2) not New York City. Living in Manhattan by choice, I tend to forget how much easier life is in nearly every place outside of Manhattan (excluding equally stressful and expensive metropolises like Bombay and Shanghai and anywhere with a long commute). For instance, in Massachusetts as in much of the country you can buy a house with 5% down. This is quite shocking in a city where pushy coop boards insist you put down at least 20% in cash and sometimes as much as 50%. Plus, in the rest of the country there's always a Home Depot within spitting distance. Not so here.
Since the house we are seeking to buy was built in 1840, there is much due diligence involved. There is the physical due diligence, like checking for radon in the basement, examining window casements, and inquiring about unexplained stains on ceilings. And there is a lot of legal due diligence, in our case involving a question of a mysterious easement. This has in turn led to examination of the minute books of town committee meeting (which minutes were extremely well written I would like to point out), reviews of Massachusetts case law, and consultations with the country lawyer who turns out to have graduated from Columbia Law school. Actually our real estate agent is a former lawyer too. So along with Jason and me that's four lawyers on the case, and we haven't even gotten to the bank lawyer.
Did I mention that all of this is super-fun? And it turns out to be a great couple's activity for two lawyers in a marriage-like relationship who, though not explicitly practicing law, can still throw around a Problem of the Unborn Widow when required. Because buying a house as a married couple means there are lots of new activities you can do together! Like decoding all the different charges on the bank closing estimates and parsing the housing inspector's report.
It's romance, married-lawyer-person-style.
