ABSTRACT
Law was one of the main determinants of women's experiences in colonial America. Women throughout the colonies lived in patriarchal social systems that limited their autonomy and power. Legal documents do not represent all segments of society equally. They may over-represent older and wealthier members, who may have been more likely to write wills, execute deeds, and initiate lawsuits and whose estates may have been more likely to be inventoried. Because women inherited property from parents and had full ownership rights to community property of their marriages after their husbands died, they had property to sell during and after their marriages, they had property to litigate over, and they had property to bequeath to others when they died. Surviving legal papers show that married women in New Mexico brought actions in their own names. Spanish colonial legal practice included several ways of protecting property on behalf of married women whose holdings were managed by their husbands.
