Curtesy

2 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Curtesy \Cur"te*sy\ (k?r"t?-s?), n.; pl. {Curtesies} (-s?z).
     [Either fr. courlesy, the lands being held as it were by
     favor; or fr. court (LL. curtis), the husband being regarded
     as holding the lands as a vassal of the court. See {Court},
     {Courtesy}.] (Law)
     the life estate which a husband has in the lands of his


     deceased wife, which by the common law takes effect where he
     has had issue by her, born alive, and capable of inheriting
     the lands. --Mozley & W.
     [1913 Webster]

From Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Revised 6th Ed (1856) [bouvier]:

  CURTESY, or COURTESY, Scotch law. A life-rent given by law to the surviving 
  husband, of all his wife's heritage of which she died intest, if there was a 
  child of the marriage born alive. The child born of the marriage must be the 
  mother's heir. If she had a child by a former marriage, who is to succeed to 
  her estate, the husband has no right to the curtesy while such child is 
  alive; so that the curtesy is due to the husband rather as father to the 
  heir, than as husband to an heiress, conformable to the Roman law, which 
  gives to the father the usufruct of what the child succeeds to by the 
  mother. Ersk. Pr. L. Scot. B. 2, t. 9, s. 30. Vide Estate by the curtesy.