Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/1052

 wife has one-half the personal property if there is issue living, otherwise all of it, after the debts are paid.

The old Spanish law in regard to community property obtains. While each retains control of his or her separate estate, the control of the community property is vested absolutely in the husband. This includes all acquired after marriage by the joint or separate efforts of either; lands acquired under the homestead laws; lands purchased with money derived from profits or loans of the wife's separate estate; lands purchased by her with money saved from household expenses; and the court has held that even her earnings outside the home are community property unless she is living apart from her husband. The husband can not convey this without the wife's signature, and he can not dispose of more than one-half of it by will. Upon the death of either husband or wife one-half of the community property descends to the survivor, and the other half is subject to testamentary disposition. If there is no will the survivor takes half and the heirs of the deceased half; if there are none he or she takes the whole. The survivor has the preference in the right of administration.

A married woman may make contracts and sue and be sued in her own name. Husband and wife can not enter into business partnerships with each other.

By an act of 1879 father and mother were given equal guardianship of the children, and in case of the death of either the guardianship passed to the survivor. But in 1896 the Legislature enacted that the father might appoint by will a guardian of both persons and estates of minor children to the exclusion of the mother.

The same Legislature passed a law making the expenses of the family and education of the children chargeable upon the property of both husband and wife, or either of them, and provided that in relation thereto they might be sued jointly or separately.

Since 1890 women may vote for school trustees, bonds and appropriations on the same terms as men, but can not vote for State or county superintendents.

In the fall of 1894 Miss Ella Guptil was elected superintendent of schools for Clallam County. Her right