Free Bench - Definition - Law Dictionary Home Dictionary Definition free-bench

Definition :

Free-bench [sedes libera, Lat.], a widow's dower out of copyholds to which she was entitled by the custom of some manors. It is regarded as an excrescence growing out of the husband's interest, and is indeed a continuance of his estate.

The term free-bench is equally applicable to the estate which, by the custom of some manors, a husband takes in his wife's copyhold lands after her death, and anciently it was indiscriminately applied to that and to the widow's dower, but now the estate of the husband is called his curtesy, while the term free-bench is confined to the widow.

Since free-bench is only claimable by special custom, the estate which a widow is to take, both as to its quantity, quality, and duration, must be such as the custom prescribes. It is generally a third for her life, as at Common Law, but it is sometimes a fourth part only, and sometimes but a portion of the rent. In many manors the wife takes the whole for her life, in others she takes the inheritance.

Frequently the customary right is durante viduitate, and in some cases it is confined to her chaste widowhood. See COPYHOLD.

As the right of the wife to free-bench does not, like that to dower at Common Law, attach till the husband's death, any alienation by him alone, to take effect in his lifetime, though without the concurrence of the wife, whether by surrender in Court or by forfeiture, bars the claim of the widow.

Free-bench was abolished in connection with enfranchised land by the (English) Law of Property Act, 1922, 12th Sched., but it survives if the husband died before 1926; in regard to lands enfranchised under the (English) Copyhold Act, 1894, or the (English) L.P. Act, 1922, or if he dies after 1925, but was on the 1st January, 1926, of full age and of unsound mind, and died intestate and without having recovered.