Let me tell you a little bit about “dower rights,” because they are vital to understanding why the Rhinelander family insisted on having Leonard’s marriage to Alice Jones annulled, rather than getting a simple divorce. Dower rights came from common English law, in effect from the earliest days of the new nation. The statutes protected a married woman from abandonment by a husband who tired of her and wished to be rid of her, resulting in her destitution. To discourage such often arbitrary breaking of the marriage pact, dower rights gave the bride absolute possession of – not money, or family silver, or jewelry, but one-third of her husband’s real estate from the first moment of marriage.
In 1925, the Rhinelanders owned or controlled one-third of Manhattan Island, lands and fortunes accumulated over decades from before the Revolutionary War. They knew instantly that Leonard Rhinelander’s marriage to Alice Jones was subject to dower rights, and therefore an opening to the Rhinelander millions. A divorce therefore was not enough, as the marriage, though broken, still existed, allowing Alice to claim her dower rights. Only one legal solution would do to protect the Rhinelanders: the marriage’s annulment, its total excision from any legal record, in effect, that it never existed. To win such a ruling, they claimed that Alice Jones had committed fraud by lying to Leonard before their marriage that she was white – a totally spurious claim.
The trial became one of the most notorious in legal history.
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