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In the law of England and Wales, a bastard (also historically called whoreson, although both of these terms have largely dropped from common usage) is an illegitimate child, one whose parents were not married at the time of their birth. Until 1926, there was no possibility of post factum legitimisation of a bastard.
The word bastard is from the Old French bastard, which in turn was from Medieval Latin bastardus. In the modern French bâtard, the circumflex (â) merely represents the loss of the 's' over time. According to some sources, bastardus may have come from the word bastum, which means pack saddle, [1] the connection possibly being the idea that a bastard might be the child of a passing traveller (who would have a pack saddle). In support of this is the Old French phrase fils de bast loosely meaning "child of the saddle", which had a similar meaning. [1] A more defined possibility is that such a traveller was a member of the corps de bast, referring to the division of an army who arrived in town with their pack saddles the night before the troops, and left the day after, so that they may deal with all of the provisions of an army, and even do advanced scouting. This meant that for two days, they had unfettered access to all of the women in town, and were therefore the ones most likely to be the cause of the town's illegitimate offspring. (This explanation is apocryphal, but no attempt at dispute seems to have been proffered.)
Bastardy was not a status, like villeinage, but the fact of being a bastard had a number of legal effects on an individual. One exception to the general principle that a bastard could not inherit occurred when the eldest son (who would otherwise be heir) was born a bastard but the second son was born after the parents were married.
The Provisions of Merton 1235 (20 Hen. 3 c. IX), otherwise known as the Special Bastardy Act 1235, provided that except in the case of real actions the fact of bastardy could be proved by trial by jury, rather than necessitating a bishop's certificate.
Post-hoc legitimisation was introduced under the Legitimacy Act 1926 (16 & 17 Geo. 5 c. 60) and the Family Law Reform Act 1969 (c. 46) allowed a bastard to inherit on the intestacy of his parents.
In Medieval Wales, prior to its conquest by and incorporation in England, a "bastard" was defined solely as a child not acknowledged by his father. All children acknowledged by a father, whether born in or out of wedlock, had equal legal rights including the right to share in the father's inheritance. This legal difference between Wales and England is often referred to in the well-known "Brother Cadfael" series of Medieval detective mysteries.[ citation needed ]
In law, affiliation (from Latin affiliare, "to adopt as a son") was previously the term to describe legal establishment of paternity. The following description, for the most part, was written in the early 20th century, and it should be understood as a historical document.
Paternity law refers to body of law underlying legal relationship between a father and his biological or adopted children and deals with the rights and obligations of both the father and the child to each other as well as to others. A child's paternity may be relevant in relation to issues of legitimacy, inheritance and rights to a putative father's title or surname, as well as the biological father's rights to child custody in the case of separation or divorce and obligations for child support.
In English common law, fee tail or entail, is a form of trust, established by deed or settlement, that restricts the sale or inheritance of an estate in real property and prevents that property from being sold, devised by will, or otherwise alienated by the tenant-in-possession, and instead causes it to pass automatically, by operation of law, to an heir determined by the settlement deed. The terms fee tail and tailzie are from Medieval Latin feodum talliatum, which means "cut(-short) fee". Fee tail deeds are in contrast to "fee simple" deeds, possessors of which have an unrestricted title to the property, and are empowered to bequeath or dispose of it as they wish. Equivalent legal concepts exist or formerly existed in many other European countries and elsewhere; in Scots law tailzie was codified in the Entail Act 1685.
A legal fiction is a construct used in the law where a thing is taken to be true, which is not in fact true, in order to achieve an outcome. Legal fictions can be employed by the courts or found in legislation.
Legitimacy, in traditional Western common law, is the status of a child born to parents who are legally married to each other, and of a child conceived before the parents obtain a legal divorce. Conversely, illegitimacy, also known as bastardy, has been the status of a child born outside marriage, such a child being known as a bastard, a love child, a natural child, or illegitimate. In Scots law, the terms natural son and natural daughter carry the same implications.
Legitimation, legitimization (US), or legitimisation (UK) is the act of providing legitimacy. Legitimation in the social sciences refers to the process whereby an act, process, or ideology becomes legitimate by its attachment to norms and values within a given society. It is the process of making something acceptable and normative to a group or audience.
The Treasons Act 1571 was an Act of the Parliament of England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. It restored the provisions of the Treasons Act 1534, which had been passed by Parliament during the reign of her father, King Henry VIII, and then repealed by the Treason Act 1547 at the beginning of the reign of her half-brother, King Edward VI.
The Third Succession Act of King Henry VIII's reign, passed by the Parliament of England, returned his daughters Mary and Elizabeth to the line of the succession behind their half-brother Edward. Born in 1537, Edward was the son of Henry VIII and his third wife, Jane Seymour, and heir apparent to the throne.
A void marriage is a marriage that is unlawful or invalid under the laws of the jurisdiction where it is entered. A void marriage is invalid from its beginning, and is generally treated under the law as if it never existed and requires no formal action to terminate. In some jurisdictions a void marriage must still be terminated by annulment, or an annulment may be required to remove any legal impediment to a subsequent marriage. A marriage that is entered into in good faith, but that is later found to be void, may be recognized as a putative marriage and the spouses as putative spouses, with certain rights granted by statute or common law, notwithstanding that the marriage itself is void.
This is a list of fictional stories in which illegitimacy features as an important plot element. Passing mentions are omitted from this article. Many of these stories explore the social pain and exclusion felt by illegitimate "natural children".
Anne Bourchier was the suo jure7th Baroness Bourchier, suo jureLady Lovayne, and Baroness Parr of Kendal. She was the first wife of William Parr, 1st Marquess of Northampton, Earl of Essex, and the sister-in-law of Catherine Parr, the sixth wife of Henry VIII of England.
The tort of seduction was a civil wrong or tort in common law legal systems, and still exists in some jurisdictions.
The Legitimacy Act 1926 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The purpose of the Legitimacy Act 1926 was to amend the law relating to children born out of wedlock.
Antigone of Gloucester was an English noblewoman and the illegitimate daughter of Humphrey of Lancaster, 1st Duke of Gloucester (1390–1447). She was the granddaughter of King Henry IV. She has been thought to have been born between 1425 and 1428 but as her first child, Richard Grey, 3rd Earl of Tankerville, was born in November 1436 it is likely that she was born by 1424 at the very latest and possibly earlier. Her date of death is not known, but it was later than 1450.
A royal bastard is a child of a reigning monarch born out of wedlock. The king might have a child with a mistress, or the legitimacy of a marriage might be questioned for reasons concerning succession.
Colonial America bastardy laws were laws, statutes, or other legal precedents set forth by the English colonies in North America. This page focuses on the rules pertaining to bastardy that became law in the New England colonies of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania from the early seventeenth century to the late eighteenth century. The colonies established many laws based on a combination of old English common law and their religious faith. European settlers established rules to guide society upon their arrival in North America. Many of these rules strongly resembled the established guidelines set forth by England. Although the laws differed initially in their creation and enforcement, by the late eighteenth century, the New England colonies and the colony of Pennsylvania had altered their laws pertaining to bastardy to be mirror images of the laws in effect in England.
A knobstick wedding is the forced marriage of a pregnant single woman with the man known or believed to be the father. It derives its name from the staves of office carried by the church wardens whose presence was intended to ensure that the ceremony took place. The practice and the term were most prevalent in the United Kingdom in the 18th century.
The Family Law Reform Act 1969 is an act of Parliament amending various aspects of English family law. Amongst other provisions, the act lowered the age of majority from 21 years to 18 years, reformed the property rights of illegitimate children, and empowered civil courts to order blood tests to determine paternity.
The European Convention on the Legal Status of Children born out of Wedlock is a treaty adopted in 1975 under the auspices of the Council of Europe to harmonise the legal status of children born out of wedlock, and promote their equality with children born in wedlock, in the relevant legislation of the Contracting Parties. Accession is open to CoE Member States. As of 2024, it has been signed by 26 countries, and ratified by 23 countries. The Convention imposes an obligation on the Member States to eliminate discriminatory treatment of children born out of wedlock. The Council purposefully uses the term children born out of wedlock instead of illegitimate children. Historically, it is the first adopted multilateral treaty of this type.