Female

See Feme; Gsndee; Venter; Woman. FEME; or FEMME. F. A woman; a wife. Feme is the older form: L. femella^ femina, a young woman. Plural, femes, femmes. Feme covert, or feine.^overt.

A married woman

By marriage, husband and wife are one person in law. Under his protection and ''cover," she does everything; and is therefore called in law -French a feme-covert; while her condition is called ''coverture," * q. V. Feme sole, or feme-sole. A single woman: one who has never been married, who has been judicially separated from her husband, or whose rnarriage has been dissolved by divorce from, or by the death of, the husband. cases, Hammond, J. See United States v. Staats, 8 How. 44^45 (1850); United States v. Watkids, 7 Saw. 90-94 (1881), cases; People v. Lyon, 99 N. Y. 810 (1885). ' United States v. Coppersmith, ante.

2 People V, Lyon, 99 N. Y. 216 (1885). ssee Eeedti. State, 14 Tex. Ap. 664 (1888); State v. Yates, 31 W. Va. 763 (1833); 64 N. C. 873; 34 N. H. 510; 8 Utah, 457.

Feme-sole trader

A married woman who trades on her own account as if unmarried. Originated in a custom of London. Recognized in several States by statutes which enable the wives of mariners at sea, and wives whose husbands from any cause, as, drunkenness or profligacy, desert them, or refuse or neglect to provide for them. A judicial decree is not a prerequisite. The statutes being designed to suspend the marital rights of the husband in consequence of the acts enumerated, and to relieve the wife from her mai-ital obligations, the establishment of those acts is all that is required of her. The statutes are remedial, and to be interpreted benignly.

1 Compare Earnings, Separate.

Her privileges extend no further than to contracts connected with her trade. ^ A married woman who, in matters of property, is independent of her husband, is a feme sole as to such property, and may deal with it as if she were unmarried.^^

See Husband.