The deferred dower is very different from the prompt dower as a mechanism for women to gain access to property. Women are entitled to receive the deferred dower only under specific conditions, namely if they are repudiated or widowed. This means that relatively few women can claim their deferred dower and that they do so only at a later moment in their life cycle.

In this chapter, the trends in registering a deferred dower are discussed first. The marriage contracts, which are always registered if part of the dower is deferred, indicate that gradually the deferred dower has become more important than the prompt. This discussion looks at the relation between the written texts of marriage contracts and social practice in order to interpret what this means to the women concerned. The case summaries show that women did turn to the court to demand their deferred dower, but divorcees and widows are not proportionally represented. While many more widows than divorced women are entitled to the deferred dower, over two-thirds of the court cases were raised by repudiated women. Why is this? And what happened to those who did not turn to court? Did they receive their deferred dower automatically, or did they refrain from claiming it at all? These questions will be addressed in the following paragraphs.