Thayer v. Thayer’s Empirical Analysis
1842
Citation profile
30 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 30 later decisions — most recently September 2018 · most notably Newman v. Dore (1937), Ackers v. First National Bank of Topeka (1963)
30 state decisions — followed in 13 states
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on Fink v. Cox · Russel v. Ball · Pearson v. Pearson
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 30 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“rights as should be recognized, protected and enforced; that the attempt to elude these rights, in the manner disclosed in this case, was mala fide , and a fraud upon the law and upon the marital rights of the [wife], and that, as a consequence, the husband, so far as respects the widow, must be regarded, at the time of this death, as being the owner and having the seizin of the property in question.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“common law doctrine of dower in all the lands of which the husband was seized during coverture ... as an unreasonable and unnecessary clog upon the free alienation of estates, and ... of little practical use”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“she cannot be deprived of [this right] by the will of her husband, nor by jointure, except at her election.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.