Welcome back to another episode of pplpod! This week, we dive deep into the fascinating and often overlooked legal history of the United States by exploring the "Head and Master" laws. Until their final repeal, these American property laws legally permitted a husband to have the ultimate say over all household decisions and jointly owned property, completely bypassing his wife's knowledge or consent.

In this episode, we discuss how Louisiana became the very last state to repeal these restrictive family laws in 1979, ending an era where a woman's financial contributions to her own property were deemed legally irrelevant. We unpack the dramatic and pivotal Supreme Court case Kirchberg v. Feenstra (1981), where the court finally struck down the statut ...