summary. the open window spouses had overdrawn on their part of the household’s movable goods, a court seizure order could be issued against the spouse who incurred the overdrawn debt. Only when an indebted spouse died was the debt transferred to the surviving spouse and to the heirs of the deceased. The surviving spouse and deceased’s heirs normally split the household debt, which was completely in accordance with the concept of property held in common (felagstanken). The debts must be paid before the inheritance could be distributed among the heirs. In cases where the deceased’s relatives lived outside the city, the widow or widower in Stockholm often took on all repayment of the household’s debts. In such cases, an agreement was establishedwith the heirs so that the surviving spouse received all the movable property that was in the estate. These assets would then be used to pay the debts. There are also many examples of women suing a borrower before the council court because of unpaid bills. In such cases, it is difficult to determine whether the woman was a widow or a wife because all women were registered by name and wife title. Even the names of women who could be identified as widows were recorded with the wife title. It was seldom noted if a woman was someone’s widow because the burghers of Stockholm seemed nevertheless to have given women the right to use movable property. However, these cases suggest that the woman must be or have been married in order to appear in court as a creditor or debtor. It could also mean that unmarried people in Stockholm did not have this right. This is a point that remains without a conclusive answer in this study. The right for the wife to dispose of her portion in the marriage’s movable property seems to have been widely spread in Stockholm. Support for this right was found in Swedish town law. She could enter into business agreements, borrow and lend money. She was thus both a creditor and a debtor, like any other businessman. The right of the woman in Stockholm to manage movable property and be involved in business during marriage was not a right that came to the wife of a nobleman or the wife of a taxpaying farmer, which was manifest in practice and in accordance to the law of the realm. A wife only had the duty to preserve and maintain the couple’s movable property. The Swedish wife of nobles, on 295
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