My Now Wife–When I Signed this Document

from our archives…

Just because your ancestor uses the phrase “my now wife” in his will, it does not mean he had to have been married twice. A man might use the phrase to make it clear to whom a bequest was being made. If his will said “to my now wife I leave my farm and after her demise it to go to our children” that meant his wife at the time he wrote his will.

The phrase “property is to go to the heirs of my now wife” would have a similar import.