Source: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/258/314.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 17:01:29+00:00

Document:
FERRY v. SPOKANE, P. & S. RY. CO.
[258 U.S. 314, 315] Messrs. Henry L. Brant and Charles Haldane, both of New York City, and James G. Wilson, of Portland, Or., for appellant.
[258 U.S. 314, 316] Messrs. Charles H. Carey and James B. Kerr, both of Portland, Or., for appellees.
By a bill filed in the District Court of the United States for the District of Oregon, appellant asserted a dower right in 1/2 part of certain land in possession of the railway company.
The bill was dismissed on motion of the railway company and the company was awarded judgment for costs. On appeal by the complainant in the suit, the judgment was affirmed. Against the affirmance this appeal is prosecuted.
'A woman being an alien shall not on that account be barred of her dower; and any woman residing out of the state shall be entitled to dower of the lands of her deceased husband lying in this state of which her husband died seized, and the same may be assigned to her, or recovered by her, in like manner as if she and her deceased husband had been residents within the state at the time of his death.' Section 7306.
Dower is not a prvilege or immunity of citizenship, either state or federal, within the meaning of the provisions relied on. At most it is a right which, while it exists, is attached to the marital contract or relation, and it always has been deemed subject to regulation by each state as respects property within its limits. Conner v. Elliot, 18 How. 591. Neither section 2 of article 4 nor the Fourteenth Amendment takes from the several states the power to regulate this subject; nor does either make it a privilege or immunity of citizenship. Maxwell v. Bugbee, 250 U.S. 525, 537 , 538 S., 40 Sup. Ct. 2, and cases cited; United States v. Wheeler, 254 U.S. 281, 296 , 41 S. Sup. Ct. 133.
The Circuit Court of Appeals (268 Fed. 117) considered this contention, and it is difficult to add anything to its opinion. It pointed out that the Oregon statute was taken from the laws of Michigan adopted in 1846 and sustained. 1 The example of Michigan was followed in Wisconsin, Kansas, and Nebraska, and sustained by the courts of those states. 2 [258 U.S. 314, 319] To the decisions of those courts we may add Thornburn v. Doscher (U. S. Circuit Court for Oregon) 32 Fed. 810, which sustained the Oregon statute, as did the Supreme Court of Oregon in Cunningham v. Friendly, 70 Or. 222, 139 Pac. 928, 140 Pac. 989. And we may add also Richards v. Bellingham Bay Land Co., 54 Fed. 209, 4 C. C. A. 290, which decided to be legal a like statute of the state of Washington. And Blackstone speaks of dower as having become 'a great clog to alienation' and 'otherwise inconvenient to families.' 1 Washburn on Real Property (5th Ed.) 278, in note.
The cases recognize that the limitation of the dower right is to remove an impediment to the transfer of real estate and to assure titles against absent and probably unknown wives. And such is the purpose of the Oregon statute, and the means of executing the purpose appropriate, and a proper exercise of classification. It satisfies, therefore, the constitutional requirement of the equal protection of the laws; and we proceed to the inquiry whether the statute is otherwise valid.
Appellant's contention is that though she be living in New York, it is her privilege under the Fourteenth Amendment to resist the law of Oregon as a limitation of her dower rights, that is, a limitation of rights in property situated in Oregon. The contention might be tenable if the Legislature of a state was required to grant dower rights. As repellant of that proposition, the difference the laws of the states exhibit in the rights that attach to the marriage relation may be adduced. The states greatly differ as to what lands are dowable, and as to what claims are paramount to dower, and to some extent, how it will be barred. 4 Kent, 35 et seq.
[ Footnote 1 ] Pratt v. Tefft, 14 Mich. 191; Ligare v. Semple, 32 Mich. 438; Bear v. Stahl, 61 Mich. 203, 28 N. W. 69.
[ Footnote 2 ] Bennett v. Harms, 51 Wis. 251, 8 N. W. 222; Ekegren v. Marcotte, 159 Wis. 539, 150 N. W. 969; Atkins v. Atkins, 18 Neb. 474, 25 N. W. 724; Miner v. Morgan, 83 Neb. 40, 19 N. W. 781; Buffington v. Grosvenor, 46 Kan. 730, 27 Pac. 137, 13 L. R. A. 282.

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