vs- DECEMBER TERM, 1847.
LLOYD BROWN ET AL.

[HUSBAND AND WIFE—MARRIAGE SETTLEMENT.]

BY a marriage settlement the property of the wife was conveyed to trustees,
for the benefit of the wife, during coverture, free from the control, and not lia-
ble to the debts of her husband, with power to the wife to dispose of the same,
either by last will and testament, in writing, or by any other writing signed
by her hand in presence of two witnesses. The wife died without mak-
ing.any disposition whatever of the property. It was HELD—

That the contract did nothing more than suspend the marital rights of the
husband during the life of the wife; and, upon her death, the property re-
mained precisely in the same condition it would have been in if no such pow-
er of appointment had been created; and, consequently, the rights of the hus-
band revived upon her death.

When it is intended in a marriage settlement to exclude the rights of the hus-
band to the personal property of the wife, in the event of his surviving her,
and in default of her appointment, an express provision to that effect should be
inserted in the deed.

When the settlement makes no disposition of the property in the event of the
wife's death, and provides only for her dominion over it during coverture,
the right of the husband, as survivor, is a fixed and stable right, over which
the court has no control, and of which he cannot be divested.

[In the month of November, 1841, a marriage being at that
time in contemplation, between Drusilla Elliott and Lloyd
Brown, the latter, for the purpose of securing to the former the,