The mishnah from Bava Batra 42 states:
A man does not have presumption of ownership with regard to his wife’s property, and a wife does not have presumption of ownership with regard to her husband’s property.
We’ve learned that chazakah, or presumption of ownership, doesn’t work in situations where someone might make use of another’s property for ordinary reasons. So the idea that someone can’t claim ownership over a spouse’s property simply by using it for a period of time should be obvious. In fact, the Gemara on today’s daf is bothered by just how obvious this teaching is:
The mishnah teaches that a wife does not have the ability to establish the presumption of ownership with regard to her husband’s property. Isn’t that obvious? Since she has the right to sustenance from her husband’s property, she is enjoying the profits as payment of her sustenance, so her use of the property does not establish the presumption of ownership.
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No, it is necessary to state this halakhah in the event that he designated another parcel of land for her sustenance. By inference, the wife has the ability to bring proof of her ownership and take possession of her husband’s field.
Since it is known that wives benefit from their husbands’ land without owning it, it would be difficult for them to use that arrangement to make a claim for presumed ownership. But if it’s a parcel of land from which she does not draw her sustenance, then her use of it might then be used to claim a chazakah. Without the mishnah explicitly telling us such a claim is invalid, we would not otherwise know that a woman cannot claim a parcel of land her husband owns but does not use to support her.
The rabbis imagine the following scenario might have transpired: The husband suspected his wife of withholding money from him so, as a ruse, he offered to sell her a field from his holdings. If she agreed to purchase the field, he planned to accuse her of having money she had kept secret from him — after all, how else would she have been able to pay for the purchase? His offer to sell her the field was not genuine but merely a mechanism to expose her supposed withholding and claim money to which he believes himself entitled. If this is indeed the background to the wife’s claim to own the land, the man could always come forward in court to declare that the sale was not genuine, but a trick to expose her treachery.
To guard against this unseemly trick, the Gemara concludes that we don’t trust sales of land between husband and wife; such parcels can only be given as gifts. And perhaps this is good advice for marriage in general: Even if couples find it preferable to keep certain assets separated, it might be best to avoid sales of those assets between married partners.
Read all of Bava Batra 51 on Sefaria.
This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on August 15, 2024. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.
