Information AboutIllegitimacy |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT ILLEGITIMACY | |
| family law | |
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Illegitimacy is the status that was once commonly ascribed to individuals born to Parent s who were not Married . A corresponding legal term was '''bastardy'''. The child's status could be changed in either direction by Civil (as in the case of the Princes In The Tower ) or Canon Law . In some jurisdictions, marriage of an illegitimate child's parents after its birth resulted in the child's Legitimation , the child's legal status then changing to "special bastardy." HISTORY Law in many societies has denied "illegitimate" persons the same rights of Inheritance as "legitimate" ones, and in some, even the same Civil Right s. In the United Kingdom and the United States , illegitimacy carried a strong Social Stigma as late as the 1960s . Unwed mothers were often encouraged, at times forced, to give their children up for Adoption . Often, an illegitimate child was reared by Grandparent s or married Relative s as the "sister" or "nephew" of the unwed mother. In such cultures, fathers of illegitimate children often did not incur comparable Censure or legal responsibility, due to Social Attitude s about Sex , the nature of sexual reproduction, and the difficulty of determining Paternity with Certainty . In the ancient Latin phrase, "'' Mater Semper Certa Est ''" ("The mother is always certain"). Thus illegitimacy has affected not only the "illegitimate" individuals themselves. The stress that such circumstances of birth once regularly visited upon families, is illustrated in the case of Albert Einstein and his wife-to-be, Mileva Marić , who — when she became pregnant with the first of their three children, Lieserl — felt compelled to maintain separate residences in different cities. By the final third of the 20th century, in the United States , all the states had adopted uniform laws that codified the responsibility of both parents to provide support and care for a child, regardless of the Parent s' Marital Status , and gave "illegitimate" as well as Adopted persons the same rights to inherit their parents' property as anyone else. Generally speaking, in the United States, "illegitimacy" has been supplanted by the concept, "born out of wedlock." A contribution to the decline of "illegitimacy" had been made by increased ease of obtaining Divorce . Prior to this, the mother and father of many a child had been unable to marry each other because one or the other was already legally bound, by Civil or Canon Law , in a non-viable earlier Marriage that did not admit of Divorce . Their only recourse, often, had been to wait for the death of the earlier spouse(s). Today, in the Western World , the assertion that a child is less entitled to civil rights, or abides in a state of Sin , due to the Marital Status of its Parent s, would be viewed as dubious. Many Religion s continue to regard Premarital or Extramarital Sex as a Sin , but generally do not hold that a resultant child itself dwells in a state of sin. Nevertheless, the late- 20th-century demise, in Western culture, of the concept of "illegitimacy" came too late to relieve the contemporaneous Stigma once suffered by such Creative individuals, born before the 20th century, as Leone Battista Alberti , Leonardo Da Vinci , Erasmus Of Rotterdam , D'Alembert , Alexander Hamilton , Sarah Bernhardt , T.E. Lawrence or Stefan Banach . Despite the decreasing legal relevance of illegitimacy, an important exception may be found in the in ''Nguyen v. INS'', 533 U.S. 53 (2001). {Link without Title} The proportion of children born extramaritally (outside marriage) varies widely between countries. In Europe, figures range from 3% in Cyprus to 55% in Estonia . In Britain the rate is 42% (2004). The rate in Ireland is 31.4%, close to the European average of 31.6% {Link without Title} . History shows striking examples of prominent persons of "illegitimate" birth. Often they seem to have been driven to Excel in their fields of endeavor in part by a desire to overcome the Social Disadvantage that, in their time, attached to illegitimacy. Examples include Henry Morton Stanley , the explorer of Africa. PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY In the United Kingdom the notion of bastardy was effectively abolished by . Recently, some people in the United States have taken to stigmatizing the parents, rather than the child, by labeling the parents as "Bastard Parents," because it is the parents who are ultimately responsible for the actions that caused an out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Conservative cultural commentator and radio talk-show host Michael Medved advocates this stigmatization, especially in the case of "Celebrity Bastard Parents." REFERENCES
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