2 - Spousal Disputes, the Marital Property System, and the Law in Later Medieval Sweden

Summary

Recent research has emphasized the nexus of separation customs and marital property systems in medieval Europe. Indeed, the practice of marital separation across the late-medieval Franco-Belgian region may have been influenced by its communal property system. Charles Donahue Jr has observed that ‘a system of marital community property, which existed all over the Franco-Belgian region, virtually requires that a separating couple obtain a public declaration that they have separated’, whereas the English ‘separate marital property system’ more markedly fostered informal ‘do-it-yourself’ separations. Donahue's observations have been corroborated by a recent article by Monique Vleeschouwers-Van Melkebeek, focusing on separation and the division of property in the late-medieval southern Low Countries. There, the ‘customary property system in the Franco-Belgian region spurred the couples on in their demand for a judicial separation’, in contrast to England. From the Franco-Belgian region, hundreds of preserved divisions of marital property can also be found in secular court records as a material consequence of judicial separations, granted by ecclesiastical courts.