Property: ownership interests; rights and liabilities of married women act; revise gender-specific language. Amends secs. 1, 4, 5, & 6 of 1981 PA 216 (MCL 557.21 et seq.). TIE BAR WITH: HJR F'25
HB 4609 revises Michigan’s Married Women’s Property Act to update outdated gender-specific language and replace references to “woman” and “husband” with more gender-neutral terms such as “married woman” and “spouse.” The bill keeps the core legal framework intact: property acquired before or during marriage by gift, inheritance, devise, or personal earnings remains the separate property of the married woman, and she may contract, sell, transfer, mortgage, devise, or bequeath that property as if unmarried.
The bill also preserves and clarifies a married woman’s ability to enter contracts related to her separate property, sue or be sued on those contracts, and have judgments satisfied from that separate property. It continues to allow her to act as a surety, pledge or assign separate property as security, or give a general guarantee for another person’s debt, including a spouse’s debt, with judgments collectible from her separate property under the conditions stated in the act. The bill is tied to a proposed constitutional amendment and would not take effect unless that amendment becomes part of the Michigan Constitution.
HB 4609 would amend sections 1, 4, 5, and 6 of 1981 PA 216 (MCL 557.21 et seq.), modernizing statutory language while leaving the substantive rights and liabilities largely unchanged. Its main legal effect is to make the statute gender-neutral by substituting “spouse” for “husband” in key provisions and clarifying that the act applies to married women’s separate property, earnings, contracts, suretyship, pledges, and guarantees. The bill would affect property, contract, and debt-collection rules for married women and their spouses, but only if the referenced constitutional amendment is adopted.
The bill appears generally noncontroversial and technical in nature, focused on updating archaic statutory wording rather than changing the underlying rights of married women. The available context shows no committee testimony, votes, or recorded opposition, suggesting the measure was presented as a housekeeping or modernization bill. Its tie-bar to a constitutional amendment indicates the sponsors viewed the statutory changes as dependent on broader constitutional language changes.
The main point of potential contention is the bill’s tie to a separate constitutional amendment, meaning the statutory revisions cannot take effect on their own. Substantively, the bill preserves a married woman’s ability to bind her separate property for her own contracts and for surety or guarantee obligations, including a spouse’s debts, which could raise concerns for those focused on creditor exposure or marital property protections. However, because the bill largely updates terminology and maintains existing legal rules, no specific opposition is reflected in the provided record.