In late antiquity, under Roman law, daughters inherited equally from their parents if no will was produced. In addition, Roman law recognized wives property as legally separate from husbandss property, as did some legal systems in parts of Europe and colonial Latin America. Christian cultures claim to be guided by the New Testament in regard to their view on the position of a wife in society as well as her marriage. The New Testament condemns divorce for both men and women (1 Cor 7:10–11), and assumes monogamy on the part of the husband: the wife is to have her "own" husband, and the husband is to have his "own" wife (1 Cor 7:2). In the medieval period, this was understood to mean that a wife should not share a husband with other wives. As a result, divorce was relatively uncommon in the pre-modern West, particularly in the medieval and early modern period, and husbands in the Roman, later medieval and early modern period did not publicly take more than one wife. In pre-modern times, it was unusual to marry for love alone, although it became an ideal in literature by the early modern period. In the 12th century, the Roman Catholic Church drastically changed legal standards for marital consent by allowing daughters over 12 and sons over 14 to marry without their parents approval, even if their marriage was made clandestinely. Parish studies have confirmed that late medieval women did sometimes marry against their parents approval.
The status of marriage, as opposed to unmarried pregnant women, allows the spouse to be responsible for the child, and to speak on behalf of their wife; a partner is also responsible for the wifes child in states where they are automatically assumed to be the biological legal parent. Vice versa, a wife has more legal authority in some cases when she speaks on behalf of a spouse than she would have if they were not married, e.g. when her spouse is in a coma after an accident, a wife may have the right of advocacy. If they divorce, she also might receive—or pay—alimony (see Law and divorce around the world). Womens income affect the dynamics of heterosexual love relationships
The effect of womens income on heterosexual relationships’ dynamics depends on the couple’s different factors. Firstly on the cultural values that the couple has. As explained in (Brown and Roberts (2014)., according to the traditional levels of values of the couple, is going to dependent there effects that the wifes income is going to generate in the dynamics of the relationship. If the couple has strong traditional values, the income of women will affect mens gender identity and affect their well-being. On the other hand if they have strong liberal values, the income of a woman changes the dynamics almost in the opposite way, wife’s are the provider of the house and the man does the housework.