Legitimate child

“ Where children are stated, legitimate children are supposed to be intended; unless it is impossible, through the celibacy of the testator, that he could have any legitimate children. But in the case of a female, where she had children of both kinds, and the bequest was stated to be to the children of R. M., deceased, and she left two, one legitimate, and the other otherwise, but reputed and allowed to be her child, and known to be so by the testator, the illegitimate child took its legacy with the other. ”

“ The duties of parents extend to illegitimate as well as to legitimate children. The duty of caring for an illegitimate child falls primarily on the mother, who, before a year has elapsed from its birth, may obtain from the magistrates a maintenance order against the reputed father, providing for the child's support and education at his expense.
A husband is bound by our law to support the children of his wife by a former husband as well as his own. ”

“ A legitimate child—with the exception noted above—is the offspring of parents who were lawfully married before the time of its birth. A posthumous child, if born in due time after the husband’s death, is legitimate.
The father has primâ facie a right to the custody of his children while under the age of sixteen years; after that age, if they are able to maintain themselves, they may be emancipated from his control. ”

“ By legitimisation, the illegitimate child acquires the position of the legitimate child. There are two chief methods of legitimisation, viz., legitimatio per subsequens matrimonium, and legitimatio per rescriptum principis. About 25 to 30 per cent. of all illegitimate children are legitimised. Of children legitimised [91] during the first year of life, the process is effected in the great majority during the second and third months after birth. The older the child, the less likelihood is there of its legitimisation; and legitimisation is less probable in towns than in the country. ”

“ Thus a much smaller proportion of young persons and of adults consists of persons of illegitimate birth than in the case of the new-born. The proper method of comparison would be to ascertain whether the percentage of illegitimate children at a certain age convicted of criminal offences or undergoing education in a reformatory is greater than the percentage of legitimate children of like age found to be undergoing the same punishment or the same education. ”

“ An illegitimate child may represent his mother and may inherit any part of the estate of the mother's kindred, either lineal or collateral.'↑ 'The father of an illegitimate child, by publicly acknowledging it as his own, receiving it as such, with the consent of his wife, if he is married, into his family, and otherwise treating it as if it were a legitimate child, thereby adopts it as such ”

“ Among children suffering from gross ill-treatment, we find a preponderance, in view of their respective numbers, of illegitimate as compared with legitimate children.
(b) We are always told that an illegitimate child will be horribly ill-treated if its mother marries, not the child’s father, but another man. It will be ill-treated by the man because it is a stepchild, and by the woman because it interferes with her relations to her husband, and awakens unpleasant memories. ”

“ Advantages and Disadvantages of Illegitimate Birth.—Three different views prevail regarding the relative advantages and disadvantages of illegitimate births. (1) Illegitimate children come into the world favourably equipped, for their parents are young, and their union depends not upon interest, but upon love. (2) Illegitimate children are hereditarily defective, as is clearly manifest in all relationships. Private statistical data show that in respect of body-weight and body-length the illegitimate new-born, boys as well as girls, compare unfavourably with the legitimate. ”

“ It can be just as wrong and horrible to have children as it can be sublime. What right has that little underbred girl to bring an illegitimate life into the world? The law doesn't provide for the illegitimate child. ”

“ How can we expect that an illegitimate child will be properly brought up when the father commonly accepts no responsibility for the matter, and the mother is usually forced to commit her child to the care of a baby-farmer or to send it to a foundling hospital? By the contemptuous attitude of the general public towards him, and by his inferior legal, social, and economic position, the person of illegitimate birth is, as it were, forced to seek revenge from society for the wrongs which, in his opinion, society has inflicted upon him. ”

“ It is not for your sake nor for our sake that this is to be done, but for the sake of the family at large, and to prevent the necessity of future lawsuits which would be ruinous to the property. If the child be legitimate, let that, in God's name, be proclaimed so loud that no one shall hereafter be able to cast a doubt upon the fact. ”

“ Whether children should suffer any loss through being illegitimate?
(3) Whether they can be legitimized?
Art. 1 - Whether children born out of true marriage are illegitimate? Objection 1: It would seem that children born out of true marriage are legitimate. For he that is born according to law is called a legitimate son. Now everyone is born according to law, at least the law of nature, which has more force than any other. Therefore every child is to be called legitimate. ”

“ The morality of the future will not be found in sacrificing to the holiness of the family so-called illegitimate children, who are often by nature richly endowed, but who by the prevailing legal system receive such treatment, that they often become what they are called, and so are filled with vengeance against society and the perverse conceptions of law whose victims they are. ”

“ And, although by the statutes of this country, an illegitimate child appears to be exempt from such obligations towards its parent; yet we find, that, in cases of legal issue, the tie of nature is not dissolved by any misconduct of the parent; and consequently a child ought equally to defend the person, or maintain the cause, or suit, of a bad parent, as of a virtuous one ”

“ If it is true that illegitimate children are of very little use to the community, and if it is impossible to prevent the birth of such children, it is at any rate desirable, continue the writers of this school, that those which actually do come into the world should die as soon as possible. ”

“ We start from the premise that illegitimate children are not 'nonpersons.' They are humans, live, and have their being. [3] They are clearly 'persons' within the meaning of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. ”

“ The rights asserted here involve the intimate, familial relationship between a child and his own mother. When the child's claim of damage for loss of his mother is in issue, why, in terms of 'equal protection,' should the tortfeasors go free merely because the child is illegitimate? Why should the illegitimate child be denied rights merely because of his birth out of wedlock? He certainly is subject to all the responsibilities of a citizen, including the payment of taxes and conscription under the Selective Service Act. ”

“ If the mother of an illegitimate child be disallowed the right of acting as the [110] child’s legal representative, we obviate the danger that that right may be misused by a dissolute or thoughtless mother by making fraudulent claims for a bastardy allowance in the name of the child upon various men who may have had intercourse with her during the period of pregnancy. ”

“ Then the child, who has received its life from sound, loving human beings and has been afterwards brought up wisely and lovingly, will be called legitimate, even if its parents have been united in complete freedom. Then will the child, who has been born in a loveless marriage, and has been burdened by the fault of its parents with bodily or mental disease, [Pg 45] be regarded as illegitimate, even if its parents have been united in marriage by the Pope at St. ”

“ Legitimate children shall be guaranteed those full rights necessary for the order and unity of the*family, and rights corresponding to their position shall also be recognised in the case of illegitimate chil dren who can be recognised as offspring, and likewise unborn children, particularly the right to maintenance which shall be the liability of those upon whom, after investigation, the duty is found to fall. ”

“ The right of the state, as parens patriae, to deny to the child procedural rights available to his elders was elaborated by the assertion that a child, unlike an adult, has a right "not to liberty, but to custody." ”

“ My own situation, which differed and was distinguished only because it concerned the child of a man who had been placed in the highest position the greatest republic in the world can offer, led me to the conclusion that it was high time it was righted, and that little children should be recognized, not for their parental origin, but for themselves and as having every right to legitimacy, and to every opportunity that would be theirs if they had been born under the yoke of legal marriage. ”

“ Legal restrictions on minors, especially those supportive of the parental role, may be important to the child's chances for the full growth and maturity that make eventual participation in a free society meaningful and rewarding." Bellotti II, 443 U.S., at 638-639, 99 S.Ct. at 3045-3046 (opinion of Powell, J.) .↑ Under common-law principles, one parent has authority to act as agent for the other in matters of their child's upbringing and education. ”

“ The only points in which infancy created a defect in civil status were that infants were subject to the restraints on complete freedom of action involved in their being in the legal custody of the father, and that it was and is lawful for parents, guardians, employers and teachers to inflict corporal punishment proportioned in amount and severity to the nature of the fault committed and the age and mental capacity of the child punished. ”

“ Infanticide committed by the mother is doubtless a monstrous, unnatural crime; for to commit it the mother must have silenced all the feelings of nature; it is, however, no offense against the external rights of the child. The child has no legal rights upon its mother. It is an offense against the laws of the state, which provide that all children must be educated, and in so far it is to be punished. ”

“ This would bring relief to both of us from much of the deadly monotony of sordid, every-day affairs, if the girl could go on just the same as the man, she being allowed to have a child legally, which she could either take care of herself or delegate to the State’s care. ”

“ All these wrongs of a child are the result of the low estimate which prevails as to the rights of a child. There seems to be little or no interest in a child as a subject of the Queen and an object of the law. ”

“ Radical parents, though emancipated from the belief of ownership in the human soul, still cling tenaciously to the notion that they own the child, and that they have the right to exercise their authority over it. So they set out to mold and form the child according to their own conception of what is right and wrong, forcing their ideas upon it with the same vehemence that the average Catholic parent uses. ”

“ Article 40 States Parties recognize the right of every child alleged as, accused of, or recognized as having infringed the penal law to be treated in a manner consistent with the promotion of the child's sense of dignity and worth, which reinforces the child's respect for the human rights and fundamental freedoms of others and which takes into account the child's age and the desirability of promoting the child's reintegration and the child's assuming a constructive role in society. ”

“ Some day the State,—you and I,—will step in and enforce this command and will visit its severest condemnation and even penalty upon parents, not because a child has been born to them illegitimately in a legal or technical sense, but because in a very real and terrible sense they have been guilty of mothering and fathering a child into life which is not wholly viable—that is unendowered with complete opportunity for normal living. ”

“ But even if it should be found that parents may have rights of a Constitutional dimension vis-à-vis their child that are separate from the child's, we would find that in the present area the individual rights of the minor outweigh the rights of the parents, and must be protected. ”

“ If any offender whose conduct against a child has proved him to be incapable of exercising with propriety parental authority, the powers of a guardian, the powers of a foster-parent, the duties of a teacher, it is essential to deprive him of these powers without delay; and this should be done, not only in the interests of the particular child, but in the interests of all children. ”

“ Law, in the domain of childhood, is parental command; and even though the child’s sense of justice may not be as discriminating as that of the parent, nevertheless it is strong enough and deep enough to impel him to resist, by evasion, subterfuge, deceit, or other means at hand, those parental laws which he believes to be founded on mere caprice or positive injustice. ”

“ Again, the authority of parents, though the deference it begets remain to grace the relations of parents and child, is itself a provisional function, and is only successful as it encourages the autonomy, if we may call it so, of the child. A single decision made by the parents which the child is, or should be, capable of making for itself, is an encroachment on the rights of the child, and a transgression on the part of the parents. ”