or COURTESY, otherwise CURIOSITY, is, by the law of Scotland, that right whereby the surviving husband of an heiress, if a living child which has been heard to cry have been born of the marriage, is entitled to the liferent of the whole heritable estate in which his wife dies intestate as heiress of her predecessor—conquest being excluded. The right depends exclusively upon the existence of issue—not upon the duration of the marriage. The wife's sasine measures the extent of the courtesy, and no service or renewing is required to complete the right of the husband, as he has only to continue possession of the estate. By marriage settlements, courtesy, like terce, is often excluded, and a simple liferent annuity substituted; and in that case a special resignation is necessary. As the right is conferred on the husband as father of the heir rather than as widower of the heiress, where there is a child of a former marriage, who is to succeed to the property of the mother, courtesy does not vest in the second husband during the child's lifetime. The husband, as his wife's temporary representative, is liable for not only all yearly real burdens, but even for current interest of personal bonds so far as luteratus.

The law of courtesy in England is substantially the same with that of Scotland.