The Sung can be seen as a high point for women's property rights in China. Whereas Sung women's relation to property was broadly consistent with earlier tradition, in rapidly changing times and unstable economic conditions, women's property took on new importance and received new protections. Detailed laws dictated the devolution of property to daughters under various conditions and protected a wife's property within marriage and after widowhood. A plethora of legislation allowed considerable wealth to pass to families of different surnames through daughters or be taken into second and third marriages by widows. Most significantly, legal language originally intended to protect the agnatic line was reinterpreted to justify the transfer of property to daughters. These developments represented the culmination of a trend, already underway before the Sung, away from patrilineal principles and toward protection of women's property rights.

Social and economic changes during the Sung that affected the dynamic between state and society also affected the evolution of property rights and our knowledge of these. The spread of literacy and printing of law books gave more people the ability to go to court. The scope of litigation expanded as men and women in large numbers disputed property in court or appealed to the state for protection of property rights. Additionally, a wealth of records produced by the new Sung printing industry make it possible to fill in details of legal developments left unknown for earlier periods.