A Wife’s Wages Were Her Own, a Seattle Court Rules
A judge protected Anna Craig’s homestead and savings from her husband’s creditors, ruling that her earnings and property could remain separate from the community estate.
Special Judge John V. Humphries yesterday rendered a decision in the case of Charles Craig and Anna Craig against Thomas McDonough and T. H. Woolery, as sheriff, in favor of the plaintiffs. The action was brought to enjoin the sale of a parcel of real estate under execution. Two causes of action were alleged: that as sheriff, Woolery levied upon the separate and individual property of Anna Craig, and that the property levied upon consisted of a homestead.
The court held that the property came to Mrs. Craig as the result of her own earnings, accumulated by her labor and skill, and furthermore that the property had been transferred to her years before the debt of defendant was contracted. The contract between Craig and his wife, that she should have her earnings as her own separate property, was valid, and took the property and earnings out from the community.
“The court held that the property came to Mrs. Craig as the result of her own earnings, accumulated by her labor and skill.”
Married women’s property rights were still being tested in 1890s Washington, and the Craig ruling made a wife’s labor a shield against her husband’s debts. The question of whose earnings count as whose—and who gets protected when money and marriage mix—has not gone away.
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