Chambers v. Davis’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1 state decisions

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 1 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““If an estate be legally settled on the wife, be- • fore marriage, as a jointure in lieu of dower, or if, after the death of her husband, she has dower regularly allotted to her, in either case such estate would not be liable for the payment of the husband’s debts. But when she takes under the will, she holds the estate as devisee merely, and derives no right to it as widow, although the devise may have the effect to bar her claim to dower. The statute allows her the right to waive the provision made for her by the will, and demand her dower (1 Stat. Laws, 575), but if she fail to do it, and claims under the will, she occupies the same attitude of other devisees. The act is voluntary on her part, and if she accept the provision made for her by the will, she must take the estate, subject to all claims against it. If she had the right to hold it exempt from the payment of her husband’s debts, it would follow that a testator, by devising his estate to his wife, could place it out of the reach of his creditors. The estate in her hands as devisee has no such exemption, nor has she the right, as widow, to require that the testator’s other estate shall be applied to the exoneration of the estate devised to her.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Maynard's Adm'r v. Maynard