In re the Estate of Skinner

Speakman, Judge,

delivering the opinion of the court :

The following is the exact question to be determined:

Is a husband who survived his wife entitled to any interest as tenant by the curtesy or any interest after the manner of curtesy in land of which his wife died seized in fee in 1937, she having devised said land by will to persons other than her husband, and there having been no issue born of the marriage?

That “tenancy by the curtesy” arose in this state not as the result of legislative action but as a common law right is beyond question.

The earliest statute in this state in which the…