If you have owned, bought or sold real estate in Ohio, you may have come across the issue of dower rights to the property. In short, a dower right is one spouses right to an interest in real property owned solely in the name of the other spouse.
In Ohio, dower is a governed by Ohio Revised Code section 2103.02 and amounts to an estate for life in 1/3 of the real property owned during marriage.
Historically, the concept of dower goes back many centuries. It originally applied only to wives. The male equivalent of dower was called, of all things, "curtesy", but that is a topic for another article. Dower currently applies to either spouse regardless of sex.
According to Wikipedia, the source of all true things on the internet, "dower is the gift given by the groom to the bride, customarily on the morning after the wedding" and "specifically intended for the maintenance of the widow." Currently, we men favor giving our brides the gift of buyers remorse and regret on the morning after our weddings.
This much is true, that historically, men routinely held the title to land and that very infrequently if ever was the wife named as co-owner to a couples estate. The untimely death of a husband often created a financial hardship for the newly widowed. Dower was a way to protect the livelihood of the widow.
This dower right, in legal parlance, is called "inchoate" which means not fully formed. For you see, the dower right isn't the same as an ownership interest. Rather, it is an expectation of an interest upon the death of a spouse.
Today, when a married person owns property individually and sells it, the spouse must sign away her dower rights on the deed.
Is this Dower right an antiquated concept whose time has passed? I would argue, yes. Today's widow or widower are protected, and better so, by surviving spouse statutes designed to ensure a spouse's share. However, in law, we love the our ancient concepts and Latin phrases, so don't expect dower to go away any time soon.