Machen's v. Machen

The question arising upon the evidence in the court below was, whether the marital rights of James Machen, who was the plaintiff’s testator, and the husband of the defendant, attached to the property in controversy during the coverture. “The inquiry, in every such case, is, not whether the husband had the right to reduce the property to possession as husband, but whether he actually reduced it to possession in that capacity.” In the absence of a statute changing the principle of the common law, where personal property, given to a wife during coverture, without expressions in the gift creating…