Jointure

Jointure was a legal arrangement used chiefly in late medieval and early modern Britain, under which the husband's family settled an estate on a married couple jointly at the time of marriage. Its most important practical function was to provide the wife with a livelihood if she outlived her husband and became a widow, and the term is most commonly used in this specific sense, functioning much like, and often interchangeably with, the related concept of dower. Because a jointure was created for the couple together rather than granted to the wife alone after the husband's death, it operated as a form of pre-arranged financial security negotiated as part of the marriage settlement itself, rather than a right that arose automatically only once widowhood occurred.