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.
Facts
Classification
Doctrine Category Connections
In Area Of Law
Entity-backed identity for the doctrine category value this doctrine already carries as an enum fact, resolved to a doctrine entity by an explicit value-to-entity map (phase 3 bucket conversion, docs\design_entity_backed_browse_buckets_20260928.md). The enum fact itself stays on the entity unchanged.
In the Other Atlases
- Also in Society and Culture Atlas: Jointure, the same subject.
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Jointure
the estate given to a married couple by the husband's family... providing a livelihood for the wife if she became widowedView the Source Jointure (Wikipedia)
In Group: Estate in Land, lead paragraph defines the marriage estateView the Source Reader Challenges (0)
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