CURTESY: A widower's right to an interest in his deceased wife's real property.
This is the common law's male equivalent to dower rights.
Common law curtesy rights were not limited to 33.3% of the wife's real property, as for dower, the widow's entitlement was so limited.
Common law also required that the widower had fathered children with the deceased.
This common law entitlement has been abolished in most common law Canadian provinces such as the British Columbia Estate Administration Act which provided, at ¶95(2) that:
"Abolition of ... curtesy.... No husband is entitled to an estate by the curtesy in the land of his deceased wife dying intestate."
Similarly, Ontario's
Succession Law Reform Act (RSO 1990 c. S26) states: "The common law right of a widower to curtesy is abolished."
And from the "because I can" department comes this little jewel of trust law
legalese, for which UNB law professor A. La Forest takes full credit:
"If the wife had a life estate and a reversion in fee following a contingent remainder, there was an estate by the curtesy in the reversion if the remainder did not take effect, because the life estate and reversion were united in her, but there was no curtesy in the reversion if the remainder took effect."