§6. In law, the husband and wife are regarded as one person. By the common law, the husband, by marriage, acquires a right to the property of the wife which she had before marriage, and which she may acquire after marriage. To her personal property, including debts due her by bond, note, or otherwise, he has an absolute right, and may use and dispose of the same as he pleases. Her chattels real, however, which are leases of land for years, though personal property, he can not dispose of by will; and if he makes no disposition of them during his life time, and she outlives him, she takes them in her own right. If he survives his wife, he acquires an absolute right to them. §7. But to the real estate of the wife, the husband does not acquire an absolute right. He has only a right to the use, rents, and profits thereof during his life, if he shall die before his wife; and in that event she takes the estate again in her own right. If the wife dies first, and there are no children, her heirs immediately take the estate. If there are children living, the husband holds the estate for life, and on his death it goes to the wife or her heirs. §8. But this rule of the common law which gives to the husband the possession and disposal of the property of the wife, has been repealed by special enactments in most of the states. By these state laws, the real and personal property of the wife owned by her before marriage, or conveyed to her by any other person than her husband after marriage, with the rents and profits of such property, is declared to be her own, and at her disposal, and not liable for the debts of her husband, except in a few cases specified in the law of each state. In some of these states, although the property of the wife is not liable for the husband's debts, he has the control and management, and the rents and profits of it. §9. As the husband, by common law, acquires, by marriage, an interest in the property of his wife, he becomes liable for her debts contracted before marriage; but if they are not recovered of him during coverture, he is discharged _Coverture_, in law, is the state of a married woman, considered as under _cover_, or under the power of her husband. Some of the states which have abolished the common law right of the husband to the property of the wife acquired before marriage, have also abolished the common law obligation of the husband to pay the debts of the wife contracted before marriage; her property alone being liable for such debts.