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General => The Common Room => Topic started by: karen58 on Monday 26 January 26 23:46 GMT (UK)
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Hello to all
I find understanding why our ancestors did things a certain way just as interesting as finding the ancestor.
When I first saw phrase 'my now wife' in a Pre-1858 will, I assumed that the testator was making provisions for his current wife, specifying the women he was married to at the time he wrote his will just in case she died before him and he remarried.
Now I'm not so sure what 'now wife' means.
I have a couple of early 1700's wills where it is obvious that the testator was dying. It just wasn't likely that there was time for him to remarry if his current wife died before him. But he still referred to his wife as his 'now wife'.
I also have seen this in a couple of wills were the testator was in his 80's. Well, if they were optimistic about finding love in old age, good on them.
I thought it was just a standard phrase used in estate planning, but its in just a many as it isn't.
Similarly, I have a will where the testator refers to his wife as the mother of his 2 children. He certainly did not have a second wife who he didn't have children with. Or a concubine.
So why all of the designations that seems unnecessary.
Could these be some sort of legal precautions for resolving legal issues or just what they called their wives?
Cheers Karen
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From memory I have come across this expression in cases where the man had been married before and if he just said "my wife" it would not be clear which wife he was talking about.
I do not think it had any bearing on a possible future wife. The rules might have changed but these days if a man gets married then any Will made prior to that marriage is null and void.
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A late friend of ours had a wife, an ex-wife and a late wife. I don't recall him mentioning a 'now' wife. Your record doesn't say 'new wife', does it ?
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To me it would indicate she had been mentioned by him before when she wasn’t his wife and now she was his wife so my now wife
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I have come across the phrase "my now wife" on a couple of occasions. In each case the testator hads been married previously and had named children from both marriages in his will. It may be a legal way of making clear that any bequest or property will go to his current (second) wife and preventing any relatives of the deceased wife having any claim.
A late friend of ours had a wife, an ex-wife and a late wife. I don't recall him mentioning a 'now' wife. Your record doesn't say 'new wife', does it ?
If your friend had lived a couple of centuries ago, he may have used the phrase
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<<....I have come across this expression in cases where the man had been married before and if he just said "my wife" it would not be clear which wife he was talking about. ...>>
Yes, I have seen this expression in a will of 1794 (I think it was) and I agree with Spelk - the testator had been married before, had children, then wife died. So he remarried, and this is his "now wife". Nothing to do with any future wife, or the dead one, just the current one !
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Hello teragram, LizzieL, Milliepede & Andrew Tarr
Thank you. If now wife means that the testator had been married before, then I have to think about how I add the children to my tree. Some could be from the first wife and some could be from the second.
Its very difficult as there are Saddleworth parish records and there are few records from the 16 and 17 hundreds and I have no baptism records for the children. Even though the testators name their sons-in-law I could only 3 or 4 marriage registers for the daughters.
Andrew, I am fairly certain that the testator is saying 'my now wife' I've put some snippets up for you to see. What do you think?
Thank you again for you help
Cheers Karen
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The snippets all say: my now wife
Spelk, Lizzie and teragram are all correct regarding the interpretation.
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Thanks horselydown86
Could 'my now wife' be a phrase more commonly used in the 16 hundreds and early 17 hundreds but became obsolete for some reason by the later part of the 17 hundreds?
I've been looking at wills from the mid 1700's to the early 1800's and they either say my wife, loving wife or beloved wife even though they have had more than 2 wives.
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FamilySearch full text results for "my now wife", restricted to the UK, finding results of course for those counties with records open to view at home, virtually all in England
Need to be signed in.
https://www.familysearch.org/en/search/full-text/results?count=20&q.text=%22my%20now%20wife%22&c.recordPlace1=on&f.recordPlace0=9
In case a proportion of the wills might mention a previous wife, just a note that making the search +"my now wife" and +"late wife" or +"former wife" reduces the results drastically.
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Andrew, I am fairly certain that the testator is saying 'my now wife' I've put some snippets up for you to see. What do you think?
No doubt about it - the characters for 'e' and 'o' are very different !
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When it just says “My wife” and the man has been married before, the date of the will can indicate which wife. Often Wills were made on the death bed.
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From a quick look at a few of those wills I rather doubt that the testator had been married before :-\
Obviously some of them had been, but perhaps the phrase is sometimes more to do with the wife, and what happens to her, than the man himself? She may of course marry again and then would be somebody else's wife! Provision for her may change in the event of remarriage.
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Not forgetting those ladies with summat to leave -
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I was thinking along similar lines as jonwarrn, that her status would change after the testator died. At the time of writing the Will the spouse would be wife but after the testator’s death she would be his widow.
Pinetree
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Terry Wogan always used to refer to "the current Mrs Wogan" .
Zaph
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Terry Wogan always used to refer to "the current Mrs Wogan" .
Might point exactly, what do you believe. Cause I'm pretty sure he only had one wife, Lady Helen?
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Ralph Bigland, 1764
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Terry Wogan always used to refer to "the current Mrs Wogan" .
Might point exactly, what do you believe. Cause I'm pretty sure he only had one wife, Lady Helen?
It was one if his jokes, he used to say it with a grin. I had a friend, a great joker, who used to do the same he was only married once for over sixty years.
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I agree with the interpretation that this phrase generally means that the testator has been married before. I have used a lot of wills from the 16th to the 19th centuries to help with my research and seen the phrase many times. Perhaps it was more common in earlier centuries because many women died in child-birth and the man married again, either to have someone help with the child-rearing or to carry on the genes!
Generally speaking, the phraseology was that in common use by the lawyer to ensure that there was no doubt as to the testator's meaning. It can lead to some very long-winded wills that actually have a very simple meaning. The testator may have said 'my wife' but the person with the legal expertise who was tasked with writing it down inserted the correct legal wording to ensure clarity. Equally the clerk may have inserted the word unnecessarily, simply because that was what he was used to writing.
Nell
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I know this is a bit 'off topic', but I have a Settlement Agreement in which the term "my now wife" is used. The marriage took place in 1807, bachelor and widow - unless the husband was lying about his marital status....
Melbell
:o
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The phrase was also used to refer to previous spouses of a woman.
I've just tried a search for the words 'my now husband' using the FamilySearch Full Text search and found nearly two hundred mentions in pre 1858 Lancashire wills. Another example taken at random from a 1722 Cheshire shows that the testatrix, a woman, had been married to Ralph Kelsall prior to her marriage to William Barker.
Nell
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I know this is a bit 'off topic', but I have a Settlement Agreement in which the term "my now wife" is used. The marriage took place in 1807, bachelor and widow - unless the husband was lying about his marital status....
Melbell
:o
Hi Melbell, Thank you.
I don't think this is off topic. This is an incident where it shouldn't be included. And there are other incidents were it should be included. Data entry just wasn't as rigorous like it is today. And there are still lots of entry mistake made now despite elaborate system designs.
Cheers Karen
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FamilySearch full text results for "my now wife", restricted to the UK, finding results of course for those counties with records open to view at home, virtually all in England
Need to be signed in.
https://www.familysearch.org/en/search/full-text/results?count=20&q.text=%22my%20now%20wife%22&c.recordPlace1=on&f.recordPlace0=9
In case a proportion of the wills might mention a previous wife, just a note that making the search +"my now wife" and +"late wife" or +"former wife" reduces the results drastically.
Hi jonwarrn
Thank you for this search on wills. Had a good look a think that the major of cases are early wills. It seems to peter out in the 1990s
And thank you as I had forgotten to use symbols like + signs for searches.
Cheers Karen