Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

of any kind of property, ranging from cash and real estate (the most common) to personal items (say, clothes and jewelry) to incorporeals (like the right to collect a debt or relief from a ser vitude). The formal ownership of the property was a matter of some dispute and may have changed over time, but in practice it was treated as the husband’s for the duration of the marriage. Certainly, he was entitled to any “fruits” of the property. If the marriage did end, however, the dowry typically reverted to the woman. The earliest rules for dowry are unclear, in part because of the usual evidentiary problems regarding early times, in part because divorce during this period is not well understood. The classical rules (in this case from around the second century bc) for the recovery of dowry depend on knowing its source. Roughly, dowry that came from the bride’s father was called profecticia ; coming from anyone else (including herself) it was called adventicia . If the husband died before the wife, she (or her father, if still alive) could reclaim either. If she died first, her father could reclaim profecticia , less one-fifth per child she left behind; the husband kept adventicia unless some other plan had been specified by the giver at the time it was given. The situation in a divorce was more complicated. If the wife initiated the divorce (or could be shown to be at fault), the hus band could recover various fractions of the dowry based on the number of children and as a penalty for the wife’s misbehavior. If the husband initiated the divorce (or was at fault), the wife kept the whole dowry, regardless of the number of children. (He was not required to pay a penalty for misbehavior, but

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