Rickety chest once contained second husband's family emblem (10)
I believe the answer is:
escutcheon
'family emblem' is the definition.
The definition and answer can be both man-made objects as well as being singular nouns.
Maybe you can see a link between them that I don't see?
'rickety chest once contained second husband's' is the wordplay.
I cannot really understand how this works, but
'second' could be 's' (common abbreviation) and 's' is located in the answer.
'husband' could be 'h' (abbreviation) and 'h' is found in the answer.
an anagram of 'once' is 'ceon' which is within the remaining letters.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for escutcheon that I've seen before include "Family shield" , "Heraldic emblem" , "Heraldic shield" .)