Opinion ID: 1687940
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: unity

Text: Petitioner first urges that the common law unity concept which prohibited suits between spouses is no longer viable. We agree. Since 1943, with the passage of the Married Women's Property Act, now chapter 708, Florida Statutes (1977), a married woman in Florida has been empowered to manage and control her separate property and to enter into agreements and contracts with her husband. [2] She may also enforce her contract and property claims by suing her husband. Dodson v. National Title Insurance Co., 159 Fla. 371, 31 So.2d 402 (1947). The legal unity concept prohibiting suits between spouses was seriously eroded by the passage of this statute permitting interspousal suits in a wide range of cases. With the passage of chapter 708, and in view of the expanded legal status of women, the common law unity concept is no longer a valid justification for the doctrine of interspousal tort immunity. By rejecting the common law unity concept we do not disparage the spiritual and emotional unity which has been held to exist by virtue of the marriage bond. As noted by the Washington Supreme Court in a case abrogating the doctrine of interspousal immunity in that state: The supposed unity of husband and wife, which serves as the traditional basis of interspousal disability, is not a reference to the common nature or loving oneness achieved in a marriage of two free individuals. Rather, this traditional premise had reference to a situation, coming on from antiquity, in which a woman's marriage for most purposes rendered her a chattel of her husband. Freehe v. Freehe, 81 Wash.2d 183, 500 P.2d 771, 773 (1972). It is the common law concept of legal unity which rendered the wife a chattel of her husband, which can no longer operate to preclude one spouse from suing the other for tortious injury.