Conser v. Biddy

Steele Hays, Associate Justice.

The issue of this appeal is the constitutionality of yet another gender-based statute— Ark. Stat. Ann. § 50-415 (Repl. 1971), which reads:

Conveyance of homestead. — No conveyance, mortgage or other instrument affecting the homestead of any married man shall be of any validity except for taxes, laborers’ and mechanics’ liens, and the purchase money, unless his wife joins in the execution of such instrument and acknowledges the same.

The chancellor held the statute unconstitutional because the same privileges and protections given wives under the statute were not…