delivered the opinion of the court.
By а bill filed in the District Court of the United States for the District of Oregon, appellant asserted a dower right in one-half part of certain land in possession of the Railway Company.
The bill was dismissed on motion of the Railway Company and the Company was awarded judgment for costs. On appeal by the complainant in the suit, the judgment was affirmed. Against the affirmance this appeal is prosecuted.
The law of Oregon provides, “ The widow of every deceased person shall be entitled to dower, or the use, during her natural life, of one-half part of all the lands whereof her husband ivas seised of an estate of inheritance at any time during the marriage, unless she is lawfully barred thereof.” Lоrd’s Oregon Laws, § 7286.
“A woman being an alien shall not on that account be barred of her dower; and any woman residing out of the state shall be entitled to dower of the lands of her deceased husband lying in this state of which her husband died seised, and the same may be assigned to her, or reсovered by her, in like manner as if she and her deceased husband had been residents within the state at the time of his death.” § 7306.
Appellant adduсes against the validity of § 7306, the provision of § 2 of Article IV of the Constitution of the United States, that “ the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States,” and the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment, which declare that no State shall “ make or *318 enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States,” or “ deprive any person of life, libеrty, or property, without due process of law,” or “ deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
Dower is not a privilege or immunity of citizenship, either state or federal, within the meaning of the provision's relied on. At most it is a right which, while it exists, is attached tо the marital contract or relation; and it always has been deemed subject to regulation-by each State as respects рroperty-within its limits.
Courier
v.
Elliott,
The further contention based on the Fourteenth Amendment necessarily is, as counsel urgе,, that dower is “■ fundamental and substantial ” — “ a property right; being, while inchoate, a chose in action, of which no citizen of the United Statеs, wherever he [she] may be resident, can be deprived without ‘ due process of law/ and as to which every person is entitled to the ‘ equal protection of the laws/ as provided in the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution.”
The Court of Appeals considered this contention, and it is difficult to add anything to its opinion. It pointed out that the Oregon'-statute was taken from the laws of Michigan adopted in 1846 and sustained. 1 Thе example of Michigan was followed in Wisconsin, Kansas and Nebraska and sustained by the courts of those States. 2
*319
To the decisions of those courts we may add
Thornburn
v.
Doscher,
U. S. Circuit Court for Oregon,
The cases recognize that the limitation of the dower right is to remove an impediment to the transfer of real estate and to assure titles against absent and probably unknown wives. And such is the purpose of the Oregon statute, and the means of executing the purpose appropriate, and a proper exercise of classification. It satisfies, therefore, the constitutional rеquirement of the equal protection of the laws; and we proceed to the inquiry whether the statute is otherwise valid.
Appellant’s contention is that, though she be living in New York, it is her privilege under the Fourteenth Amendment to resist the law of Oregon as a limitation of her dower rights, that is a limitation of rights in property situated in Oregon. The contention might be tenable 'if the legislature of a State was required to grant dower rights. As reрellent of that proposition^ the difference the laws of the States exhibit in the rights that attach to the marriage relation may be adduced. The States greatly differ as to what lands are dowable, and as to what claims are paramount to dower, and to some extent, how it will be barred. 4 Kent, p. 35, et seq.
The granting of dower, therefore, is a matter of statutory regulation. It was so decided by the United States Circuit Court оf Oregon in 1887 (Thornburn v. Doscher, supra), Judge Deady expressing it as follows: “ It rests .with the legislature to say what interest, if any, married *320 persons shall have in the property of each other, as an incident of the relation between them. It may give or withhold' dower altogether; Or it may for the security of titles, and the protection of innocent purchasers, provide that a nonresident woman whose very existence is probably unknown within the state, and is practically disavowed by the husband, shall not be entitled to dower of lands which he has disposed of without her concurrence or consent, and ostensibly as a single man. ” The law thus declared has been the law of Oregon for 65 years.
There is a distinction between dowe¡r created by the parties and thаt given by law, and the latter “ is believed to be the only kind which ever obtained in this country. ”
Randall
v.
Kreiger,
The ruling is a deduction оr incident of the more general principle expressed in
Kerr
v.
Moon,
*321 From these cases it results, as said by the Circuit Court of Appeals, that “the legislature having this power to give or withhold dowеr, it follows that it has the power to declare the manner in which the dówer right may be barred, or the grounds upon which it may be forfeited, and, if so, it has the right to provide that it may be barred by the wife’s nonresidence in the State.”
The action of the court affirming the decree of the District Court is
Affirmed.