My now Wife - Pre-1858 Wills, what does this mean?

[Jebber]

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.

[Little Nell]

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

[Melbell]

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
   

[Little Nell]

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

[karen58]

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
   

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
   

[karen58]

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