At 04:46 PM 6/22/2004 -0500, Paul Drake wrote:

>     *****Her remedies were in equity, usually inadequate and were most
> difficult to gain, since virtually no court readily would rescind a sale,
> the sanctity of land title having been paramount in the views of English
> speaking peoples.
>
>     ****There were exceptions where the buyer was complicit in a
> subterfuge or guilty of deceit and was aware at the time of purchase that
> the wife objected to the bargain.  If a buyer did not know of that
> objection or could not reasonably learn that the seller was married, most
> courts took the view that he was without fault to a greater degree than
> was the husband, and the title stood.
>
>     *****In the very few cases known to me, the husband was required to
> set aside sums of money or otherwise compensate the wife for her
> loss.  If the husband had died, and only after that death the fact of
> sale without consent was learned, the courts seem to have been quick to
> favor the wife and grant to her compensation equal to what it would have
> been had her husband died owning the land.  You other lawyers out there;
> what say you?   Paul
>     *****I do not believe that you may infer either conclusion without
> thoroughly searching the courts' orders and minutes subsequent to the
> deed date and continuing through some years subsequent to the date of
> death in order to see if the court found and resolved such a question.
>
>       Paul

If the seller's wife did not relinquish her dower rights in the sale of
land, the buyer did not have a clear title.  There are cases in Virginia
counties that bear this out.  As Virginia's attorney general John Randolph
said in the case Blair v. Blair: "dower ... follows marriage as a shadow
does its substance."
HBG

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